Thu Dec 12 2013 11:00:14 EST from fleeb

Actually, I think he's serious.

The dryer outlet is running at 240 volts rather than the usual 120 volts like most of our outlets.

If the person in question is trying to run a computer that requires 220 volts, he's better off using the dryer outlet.

This guy does a pretty good job of explaining why we're so off:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1033/how-come-the-u-s-uses-120-volt-e lectricity-not-240-like-the-rest-of-the-world

He also explains, in the last paragraph, how you get 240 from our 120 for those dryer appliances.

its 230 in the rest of the world, and 400 with rotary voltage.

there are however countries in europe that migrated during the last 40 years, i.e. france.

many switching power suplies nowadays support various voltages - at most notebook power suplies.

abandoning overcome traditions doesn't seem to be one of the strengths of the US - be it obscure units from the ancient past hard to work with, or technicaly inapropriate voltages ineficient in transmitting energy.

probably thats a side effect of 'lean govermert'

I guess if the army would switch it'd be not that much of a problem in the end.

Quote from the above article:

But don't worry that we're stuck with a technological dinosaur. Fact is, homes with standard 3-wire electrical service in most parts of the country get 240 volts. The three wires that come in from the street are 120 volts positive, zero volts (neutral), and 120 volts negative. (I know, this is alternating current, not DC, so we can't really say "120 volts positive," but don't bother me with details.)

You are still stuck, we have 5 wires here in modern homes, one is PE (protective earth), one is neutral and 3 wires with 240V each (measured against neutral). Since they are "phase shifted", the difference between two of them is around 400V. We switched from 220V to 240V, but almost all our gadgets run fine with that.

So our dryer outlets are the same as all other outlets and have 240V, our kitchen ovens use all three of those wires/phases, so we cook with 400V. German engineering in da house, yo! ;)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power#Europe and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase

NB: The image of Fig. 3 in that article is something you almost never see in germany, most of our wires run underground in cities, only really rural and small villages have wires hanging around in the air.

seconded.

Yup. The anger you show here, IG... It's painful to see. I hope that this is the way you vent it so that it doesn't have to live inside you. 

In any case, though, please, hug your kids a little extra... 

Don't worry, you're in a Safe Place here.  Except for the car fires.  And the manic macaroni.   And the Zombie.  

Hmm....

Well, at least it's all Aahz's fault....