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• Why Cheap LED Lights K...
These LED bulbs will continue to draw power from the mains indefinitely even once they're switched off and the circuit is broken. But how?!
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Him: This bulb can't turn off! Horror movie characters: I'll take your entire stock!
monster cuts the power entirely, mission failed, you’ll get them next time
i need some of those for phasmophobia so even if the ghost turns off the lights i can still see
@@leodalton3527 You're both bots aren't you?
@@AggressiveAegyo you know that can just be a bot programmed to use two accounts. And even if they aren't bots, it's clearly a scam
@@Fogolol well it worked. I want to buy whatever they tell me to now
Okay that reversed deconstruction of the capacitor to demonstrate how they're made was just brilliant.
Aluminium and more aluminium.... Lol!
Actually it's weird
They use this type of light in jail cells
Agree
A - construction if you will
I’m an electrician in Canada. This is why the bonding conductor is so important in the circuit. If the bond is disconnected from the system ground then an induced voltage can/will be introduced on every device box (the metal boxes that receptacles, switches, and lights sit in) after the break in the the bond. I have had a couple service calls of LEDs acting up because of this induced voltage, it can lead to some wacky voltage readings on your meter. It really throws you for a loop the first time you see it.
According to him, it's not induced.
This is the reason you don't bond sub panels. Your customers were smart to call you. This does not and will not happen in a properly wire home.
i have seen it on ceiling grids that get voltage on them from the troffer lights if the ground fails on them
I am not an electrician, but have been interested in such matters for a long time (decades). I knew immediately that his circuit violates electrical codes. I now understand why -- because that long length of wires creates a capacitor. Properly installed home wiring does not create capacitors.
@@dlawsAcer of course it does! How could it not?
I'm sure the energy draw is very, very tiny, so this not turning off and giving a gentle glow is a great feature. Especially for a landing or toilet which are otherwise totally unlit at night.
The big issue here is safety. This lightbulb is actually not switched off when the switch is thrown to "off".
@@thefreedomguyuk I understand why you think that. Light=electricity=danger. But it's not quite like that. AC electricity gets out of wires and crosses between wires just through capacitance. Even if you put your hand near a cable you get that effect, but it is so small, that it doesn't present a danger. Because of the way LEDs work, they can harness even the tiny amount of electric transferred through capacitance between cables. Maybe even less than the current you get when placing a damp finger across a 9v battery.
@@thefreedomguyuk No, there is no current, the reason it glows is because LED's are so efficient that they can function even with microAmps
@@Splarkszterso....there is current...
@@unscentednapalm8547 At this point i don't know what i wrote or even why.
- breaks circuit - plugs in power - light turns on Me: Confused screaming.
pfp checks out
Абдулло
lmfao
@@csquaredfilms Why do people use pfp instead of avatar these days? pfp means "picture for proof", it's supposed to be an actual picture of your person. :P
@@TheArchivistArchive nowadays it's used as "profile picture"
"I can't turn it off" "Turn it off" "I can't!"
Turn the god dam light off man... 🤣
Online games really be like that
Turn it off or your grounded
I never thought I'd live to SEE a resonance cascade!
The 90s dad is furious that you didnt turn the lights off. Do you want to pay the electric bill it's not free
This is brilliant, great explanation, it’s sounds a bit like a gas accumulator in principle. Im in the Solar PV industry and come across this capacitance phenomenon when trying to fault find ground faults on large solar cable runs.
This happens with my China LEDs at home, though it’s way more dim, I’ve been always wondering if my switches were broken or something. Thanks for explaining it!
Why… Why would it ever be the switch?
@@JACKHARRINGTON never heard of a switch breaking?
@@BMPK if a switch breaks it is either on or off.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid Not necessarily, you never had a loose contact causing flicker?
Well sometimes it might be a switch problem - if switch has a small indicator light. Its fixed by simply cutting it off.
As a fan of ElectroBoom I really appreciate your use of insulated gloves while handling live wires.
He got in the UK 240 Volt, so it's alot more lethal than the 120 Volt in Canada.
@@thebamplayer Canada is 240v Split Phase. There 180 degrees apart, allowing for 120 and 240, and almost all his high power appliances are 240. People obsessed with Canada and USA being 120v. ITS NOT its 240 they just centre tap transformers
@@astatics6176 What i meant was, that if you would touch the live wire in north america, you would only get exposed to 120 volts. To be exposed by 240 volts you need to touch BOTH phases at the same time, otherwise only 120 volt will flow through you'r body.
someones been watching technology connections but no. you'd almost only get 120V out of a outlet in america. the 240V is wired up differently and usually not accesible. so saying it's less dangerous because it's only 120V (which is still dangerous, electricity ain't a joke) is valid because the 120 volt is the one that's represented more and easier to access. also fyi, eu has the same deal, our common outlets are at 240V and we have 3 phase which effectively ends up with 400V reserved for pretty much just motors but also really high power apliances. cause 3 phase drives motors directly with barely any driving circuit. we do have specific 3 phase outlets tho, not that common, especially more rurally but those things exist, so you could even access the dangerous 3 phase voltage easier here. which is to say, eu electricity still is more dangerous by the voltage advantage cause 400V is much more dangerous than 240V. like saying 240V is more dangerous than 120V
lol same
“It will stay on indefinitely” uh oh we broke entropy
Nah,still drains electric power,you just can't quite break the circuit
It drains power from the higgs field
well until the power grid breaks down
Wait no it made more entropy. It's more chaos right?
@Jyles Prescott I appreciated the little lesson
I think it's more than a purely capacitive effect. The two long wires are coupled inductively too. As long as there's any current in one of the wires, the pair will act as a transformer.
Nope. The two long wires cannot act as a transformer because they run right next to each other, and the current through one wire is always going in the opposite direction relative to the current in the other wire. This causes the magnetic fields in each wire to perfectly oppose each other, which removes the inductance from that section of wire.
the magnetic field caused by the first wire is cancelled by the magnetic field of the second wire as long as they stick together in the same winding,, it's actually how we organise the extra length of audio wires, otherwise the quality of the audio output is going to be reduced
I think you are right that the coupling is inductive, but it is inductive at a frequency much higher than 60hz. Looking at the cheap LED bulb I see several ceramic capacitors, but no inductors. The capacitors on the LED connected to the inductive wire conductor makes a ringing LC circuit and the long wire next to it is still connected to the 60hz 120v driving the ringing. You can prove this is true by connecting a scope and finding the ringing frequency. You can measure the impedance of the cheap LED across the power connection and I bet it will measure capacitive.
@@skyak4493 The "you can measure..." is not quite completely true.... Take any regular measurement device and you won't measure much capacitance. There is also a bunch of leds in series with the capacitor. They block current in one direction and require a significant voltage (which any sane tester would stay well below) in the other. So most testers will register: "no connection". It is only when you apply a high enough AC voltage that the behavior becomes capacitive (with a twist: the threshold voltage of the leds). (detail: There is a bridge rectifier in there as well, so you'll never get the leds to block the current, only the forward voltage drop really applies).
@@rewolff2 Regular measurement devices measure reactance at one low frequency -that is the problem. Reactance varies over frequency. The circuit fails to address reactance at higher frequencies and has an oversimplified model of the semiconductors. When the current reverses and the diodes clip the current you make a square wave. The frequency content of this wave is high enough that inductance of leads can ring with the capacitors and the LED emits a small portion of this power.
After years, thanks to you, I resolve the mistery when I get a little shock trying to change a lamp even with the switch turned off. I was thinking I was crazy
Because your house is wired up wrong. In my house the mains wires are under the floor, the wire goes up the wall, through the switch, then up to the ceiling to the lights. No capacitor. To make it glow and to give you your little shock you need the utterly weird nonsensical way of the live going to the fitting first (well the connection block in the ceiling, not the one on the end of the wire where the bulb goes in), then going off to the switch, then coming back along the same wire! No idea why some houses get wired up like that, it means you turn off the switch and you still have live in the ceiling rose. OUCH! Off the ladder you fall when you jump.
@@lambertovitali3152 yep finally someone that understands. its where the switch is placed that matters
Steve: "I'll break the circuit. Please don't do it yourself, it's dangerous!" Also Steve: casually spills some water out of a giant syringe right above his wiring.
That's why he says don't do it yourself. He's smart enough to know that but of water is inconsequential, but you're not.
Water is not conductive
@@gyroninjamodder Tap water is pretty much conductive, unlike bidistillated or deionized water.
@@gyroninjamodder tap water is conductive due to the elements dissolved in it! However, try comparing the conductivity of tap water with that of the droplets that accumulate on the underside of a pot after boiling. It's not distillation, but it's noticeably less conductive. (Use a simple low-power circuit and a LED)
Exactly my thought.. he is demonstrating with water near exposed live wires!
My first thought was an inductor. But a capacitor makes much more sense, it’s like 2 really long parallel plates exist in that wire
I had the same thought at first too.
I thought that there would just be a small capacitor, storing energy for a short time
Well to be fair an inductor is basically the AC version of a capacitor and vice versa in terms of what they do.
The cable disconnected at the light switch and connected to one side of the bulb is acting as an areal. It collects energy from RF signals in the atmosphere, so as long the other side of the bulb is connected to an earth (in this case the neutral star point of the supply) energy will be dissipated. Everything about capacitance is irrelevant. I can give 2 other examples. The first is the crystal set radio, where a tuned signal between an areal and earth is sufficient to run headphones without a power supply. For the second example, you need to consider a microphone. The interference noise that would be picked up if the cable was not screened is the energy. Interestingly, when he used the cable by connecting both wires at one end and then shorting the other, he was creating a balanced circuit, where the 2 wires side by side in opposite directions were cancelling the induction in each other. The same thing can happen on a CFL bulb. The energy can collect in the strike capacitor, causing a small flick of light about every 30 minutes. People using these bulbs in the bedroom wrongly suspect a fault in the wiring or a defective switch. Many years ago, a house was built in the UK where 30 tons of scrap lift cables were included in the structure. Each length of cable was earthed at one end and cut to length to tune it into what was probably the worlds largest RF areal. The system which heated the house by using the electrical resistance of steel to produce heat, drained every signal within a 3 mile radius. The designer, a radar engineer, was threatened with imprisonment if the system was not demolished. While this video and posts on this thread make no sense, none of what I explained is taught at school or college.
@@wilsjane that would be the case if the bulb lit when it had wires that were long but unplugged, which it doesn't. Whats actually happening is the wires are acting as a capacitor, which in an AC circuit actually allow current to flow through. The reason that this doesn't happen with most appliances is because they require far more current than the cheapo LED bulb.
Thnx for explaining. Since I replaced classic light bulbs with Ikea 5watt leds, I had the same 'ghost light' issue and wondered why that was..... 10 years later I finally learned.... 🙂
Used to happen in my old house with the compact fluorescent bulbs. It would flick every 20-30secs. As if the capacitor built up enough charge to trigger the starter.
Because there's still AC power within the line and it is being drawn by the LED bulb until there's no voltage left kzhead.info/sun/ksaghd1usXNmp6s/bejne.html
Steve, After watching this you peeked my interest, a bit, so sadly, I measured the capacitance of a 50m roll of 1.0mm flat T&E which is the size of cable used in the UK for normal domestic lighting circuits, I got approx 5nf (100pf/m) between L&N. This means that the impedance or AC resistance (Xc) between L&N will be: 1/(2 pi x f x c) which = 1/(6.284 x 50 x 5x10-9) = 636.6K Ohms (31.82M ohms/m). Therefore at the UK nominal voltage of 230v a current of 230/636.6K = 0.36mA will flow in the circuit this is enough current to cause the LED's to glow. Now the reason that this lamp glows and the other does not is, because the one that does not has an electronic inverter (transformer) type LED current limiting circuit and 0.36mA is not enough to start the inverter so the LEDs stay off whilst the other (cheap) lamp appears to use a passive type (resistors & capacitors) of current limiter which will allow some of the 0.36mA to flow through the LEDs causing them to glow, there are pros and cons for both types. BTW that current would be flowing even if there was a standard tungsten lamp but it would not glow so it would not be noticed, and it also is present in every circuit in the house. The actual power wasted is very very small (probably < 50mW) due to the resulting current/voltage phase shift a domestic electric meter will not be able to meter this easily. Also it is unlikely the average UK house will have 50m of cable in the switch drop, probably more like 5 - 10m but even so maybe enough to make the LED lamp glow, some of the more efficient LEDs will glow with only a few 10's of micro amps! PS Good work
Good reply Col, spot on in my opinion.
Brilliant, thanks for this comment!
*piqued your interest...
Superb comment Col. Bravo. Maybe this could have done with pinning as initial comment. It was certainly good enough.
Now take all bulb circuits in the world, and I feel we are wasting energy.
Longer I watched this, the less I understood it lol
Like when I helped a friend fix some wiring in her house. She had some LED bulbs working on one conductor, someone forgot or didn't do a good job on the second. As I fixed it I tried to explain the phenomenon to her and it was over head like a jet.
The more you know the more you know you don't know 😉
It's just back feeding off the neutral
TL;DW: Long wires act as capacitors, and AC flows through capacitors.
Why? Because the wire is a capacitor. I still don’t know why that makes it stay on.
I feel like I should remember watching this video since I've already liked it. This is rather interesting. Love the explanations and demonstrations. Good video my guy. 👍
I’ve gotta say, as someone in an intro electronics class right now, this is extremely helpful lol thank you man
Him: This is dangerous *squirts water all over it*
Water is a poor conductor for electricity.
@@junkiexl86 *Pure* water is a poor conductor for electricity. The stuff on the water, like minerals, are what conduct electricity. If he filled that with tap water it conducts electricity just fine.
@@AndreGoersch Doubtful. Tap water from South America or Flint MI maybe. Most cities have strict water quality laws that limit the amount of impurities in potable water and you need quite a bit for water to become conductive, which is well above what is classified as potable water.
@@junkiexl86 Sure, there are strict laws regulating the quality of tap water. But it’s in regard to *human consumption*! Which means it does contain sodium, potassium and chloride, all necessary for your health. It’s incredibly far from being pure water, as in pure, distilled water you expect to find in a lab, or water filtered through reverse osmosis. Tap water, while still being a poor conductor, isn’t resistive enough to not shortcut electrical circuits like this. It has a conductivity of 5 to 50 mS/m, which is between 2 and 4 orders of magnitude higher than pure to ultra-pure water.
Judging by the cut, he shot the water scene after removing/before constructing his electricity setup.
I had an LED bulb that flashed every 5 seconds or so, I contacted my electrician and he told me it happens sometimes with low quality LED bulbs. Now I understand why... this effect must have been charging a capacitor in the bulb until it flashed and discharged, then started charging up again. Thanks for solving this mystery for me!
I don't think that is what happened at all. The glow is not caused by a capacitor, it is caused by the turned off wiring acting like a capacitor. The high quality bulb in this example hat a capacitor inside to suppress the glow. What I think happened in your case is that the bulb had loose wiring inside, or it did not fight perfectly into the socket.
Flashing of an led is more often a failure of the drive circuitry, usually due to a discreet component failure that doesn't allow the driver chip to properly run so it starts and crashes..
@@praestant8 The chip would have no idea. It would see a voltage built up on the capacitor and it would reach a threshold where the chip tries to drive the light, discharge the capacitor below the threshold and the chip would crash. Creating a blink of light. This can also happen due to the fact that capacitors will charge back up due to capacitor soakage.
Your case is different from the video..we had the same problem, my electrician fixed it for me by putting a capacitor on the bulb and it worked..consult to a “master electrician” split second he knows the answer to your problem..hehe
Sorry for being late, but I had a simmilar problem. In my case the flickering was caused by the stair light switches that were not been made to work with LED lamps. When the switches were turned off they still were passing a small amount of current thought the lamp just to light up the small LED that lets you find the switch in the dark.
when i encountered this a while back, i had a couple of theories. either, 1, something wrong with the wall wirings; or 2, maybe it's caused by the induction of ac current through the switch (facilitated by the copper wirings in the wall); or 3, due to discharging capacitors in the circuit of the led module. in the end, we ended up replacing the led module (hoping that it's either caused by 2 or 3). didn't even realize that this was a common phenomenon with chinese led lamps. i feel so much more relaxed and reassured now. fantastic video!
Yeah I think it could happen because of induction. I learned a while ago you can syphon power from mains without breaking the cable by wrapping the wire abound it lots of times.
I'm with you. A collapsing magnetic field over that much cord could do it!
You are correct. This is an inductor, not a capacitor.
@@qtipextra It's a capacitive effect. The wire doesn't need to be coiled up, that was just for this demonstration. A length of domestic mains cable (ignoring earth/ground) just two open ended conductors in close proximity but with an open circuit between them, the very definition of a capacitor The slight glow is quite a common phenomenon in LED lamps with simple reactive droppers, and it only takes a few feet of cable to the light switch to affect some lamps, perhaps the equivalent of a few hundred picofarads. More expensive lamps aren't affected because they have active elecronics and need more power to start the circuit runnng.
@@ProdigalPorcupine good call I realized that as well
@@ProdigalPorcupine It looks to me like the disconnected wire is enough of an inductor to form a high frequency ringing circuit with the capacitor on the LED and the circuit next to it connected to 120v ac is driving it. What we termed "crosstalk". If you put a scope on the switched off but glowing LED you will find high frequency voltage. Measure that connecting wire at that high frequency and the phase angle will show it is inductive. Measure the LED at that high frequency and phase angle will show it is inductive.
*clicks ElectroBoom's video* Mehdi: A friend of mine called Steve Mould told me... *me goes to watch Steve's video* Steve: A friend of mine called Mark Warner showed me....
The wierd thing is, it was Mehdi who showed it to Mark.
@@SteveMould where does the multiverse end
@@SteveMould pls explain, my head is boiling
@@SteveMould You reminded me with the TV series (DARK).
Aaah shit! Here we go again!
Him : "It will stay on indefinitely" *We did it boys, physics is no more*
this long wire has huge magnetic field. think again :)
Well GR is about to go through the ringer so who knows maybe thermodynamics is fucked too.
@@cipi7640it's just a joke :/
@@cipi7640 hey man I still can't understand how this works , I don't get how the metal coiling acts as a capacitor ca someone expalain
@@cipi7640 is there a charge seperation in the wire and the metal coat over it, is that the capacitor
This shows you that you always have some loss in jacketed (Romex) wire in your house due to capacitive effects between hot and neutral/ground (maybe knob and tube had some advantages). When I'm doing new wiring, I try to run power to the switch first which removes hot from the equation. This only happens when you run hot and return originating from the light fixture.
When I saw the cable with the two wires going in parallel my IT background immediately made me hear alarm bells. We don't really deal with constant currents like this but signal corruption is always a consideration. Now this went a little differently than I would've thought but it's the same forces at play.
@Steve Mould you are not incorrect saying that the long coil wire is a capacitor, but the capacitor doesn't create the effect you are noticing. It's rather that the long wire is working like a transformer. One is the live wire is creating an oscillating electric field and the other is converting it back into oscillating voltage. This is essentially how every regular transformer works. You could even increase the glow if you decrease the loop size or wrapping it around a metal rod. You are correct that this constantly drawing power of the line, which is different to what a capacitor would do. It would discharge (quickly) and not draw any power of your main line.
Um actually a transformer needs a current running trough it’s primary coil in this example it’s not connected so no current could flow trough it
Um and I didn't know the English term last time, the who thing is called Mutual Inductance.
Physic II intensify
You said it yourself, it works through an oscillating electric field being converted back into oscillating voltage. But this is how a _capacitor_ works, not a transformer. A transformer works through an oscillating magnetic field (generated by an oscillating current) being converted back into oscillating current. There is an oscillating current passing through the wires (the bulb needs current to power on, obviously), but it's tiny next to the oscillating voltage (full mains), so the capacitive effect wins over with a large margin.
What's really happening is they have a small fusion reactor inside of each light bulb and they only need the initial power to Kickstart the fusion process. Once that's done, they'll not only power the light bulb, but your entire house.
Those sneaky CHINESE!!
@@Mohammad__M__ 😂
It’s a pocket dimension where people generate electricity from Christmas cheer and murder
Don't tell me the future, I want to see it for myself
Bullshit?🤯
That's why they glow!! Excellent video (especially the part where you put that capacitor back together with just pliers: solid skills ;-) )
My idea was to measure electro magnetic fields and see what you normally would on IR. Big oversight was that MRI exist and it's very difficult
you can tell the light bulb's "off" illumination is still being actively powered because the rolling shutter reveals that it flickers on and off in sequence.
Wellspotted, I saw this & believe the coil of wire is acting as an intenna.
Yeah and if you paid attention, you'd know why. Don't listen to the people saying "It siphons power of the neutral wire", that's nonsense because there's no power on neutral and that's also not how circuits work. A capacitor is like a frequency dependant resistor. The higher the frequency, the lower the resistance, because in AC, the electrons don't actually flow, they just vibrate back and forth and the transfer of energy works pretty similar to how materials transfer sound. It's the shockwave going from one particle to the next that carries the soundwave forward, even if the particles just vibrate in place. It works the same. If the circuit is on, the chain of electrons carries the up and down wave of the changing voltage to the bulb, but if the circuit is broken, because the wires are really close together for several meters of the cable, there's enough surface area for the charge in the one wire to interact with the electrons in the other wire. It's comparable to sound being shielded off by a pane of glass. The insulation in the cable is the glass and if you yell at someone through a closed window, the sound traveling through the air hits the glass and causes a tiny amount of energy is being transferred to the glass and to the air on the other side, so the sound is dampened, but not completely shielded off, but contuous flow of air is completely stopped. The cable works the same way in that the voltage alternating is like sound vibrations and the insulation in the cable is stopping continuous current, but only shielding, not stopping the electric (not magnetic) field from the alternating voltage. So to go back to the frequency dependant resistor. There's still current flowing, but it's just electrons vibrating back and forth with 50 (or in this case 60Hz), just severely dampened by the insulation of the cable and the higher the frequency, the stronger the effect because more vibrations per second means that more energy is being transferred from one wire to the other. And it only works with the cheap foreign bulb and not the more expensive domestic one, because the little transformer coil on the domestic bulb has inductivity, which cancels out the capacity of the wire, while the foreign bulb is just lots of LEDs put in series to take mains voltage directly. There.
@@Dragongaga Actually it is 50Hz. The plugs and sockets are UK ones and the video creator is British. The UK grid runs at 230V 50Hz.
@@slendermanRblx Oh, you're right. I mistook him for someone else
Where did you see it?
"You need to head over to Elektroboom." *Thunder Crackles and Mad Scientist Cackling*
Electroboom*
According to my calculations, if you doubled the length of the wire and did not stack the wires on top of each other, the light of the LEDs would increase. This test can also be done with DC current and normal LEDs. Just increase the length of the wire and don't pile them on top of each other. You have a very good channel. Thankyou.
I saw same effect on light touch switches I bought online, they have small led which glows only by using Live wire, no need to connect neutral, but it will only glow if there is any device connect to the switch, really fascinating design
You can fix that by attaching a capacitor assembly, in parallel to the bulb. The assembly you need is normally used in no neutral smart switches. You can get one from Shelly, for example.
Watched this with my dad who's an electrician. He wasn't happy. Edit: "No he hasn't changed the circuit, he's just created a fire hazard."
But it's a fire hazard because it's charged :3
@@user-ed9qu5im2y I assume he's saying that because of the coiled wire. It is an old myth that coiled extension cords will cause a fire. Some people will say it creates an inductor (it doesn't since both legs are coiled next to each other), and some people say the wires will great up because there's not enough air flow. You'd need to have the wire coiled super tight, airflow completely blocked, something on top of the coil to stop great from escaping, and be pulling TONS of current. The breaker will pop long before a fire starts, and there's rarely a time that all of those conditions are met. It's a situation that is extremely rare, and has only happened a handful of times. It usually happens when the wire is in some sort of an enclosure, like a job site box, it's super hot out, the box is closed, and they're pulling enough current to the point where it's barely not tripping the breaker.
@@littlejackalo5326 nope
I'm a sparky too, a trick I learnt years ago for LEDs that are affected by this is to use LED indicator lamps or basically any diode on the circuit in the off position, this means when the lamp is switched off your giving the current a path and a job to do which eliminates the problem. You can either install illuminated switches and have the switch illuminate when in the off position or just hide the LED indicator behind the lights switch plate.
@@littlejackalo5326 I've seen it on a coiled up extension lead plugged into a 3kw site heater.
Him doing gestures with his hands around an exposed live wire made me uncomfortable.
ElectroBOOM
He'll be alright
And then he yanks out a syringe filled with water and starts squirting all over the table
Breadsnake - It's the amps, not the volts that will kill you dead! You could survive 200volts @ 2 amps, but not at 10amps.
@@rogertycholiz2218 I wanna see you grab a wire that's live at 200VAC but current-limited to 2 amps. Go ahead, film it, I'll wait. :)
"This bulb can't be switched off!" *shows us how to switch it off within the first minute* thanks Mr Mould, you just saved me 9 minutes of time!
I watched this video 4 years ago, now it’s popped up in my recommended list. Brilliant. 😃👍
If you use the "liquid" metaphor per electricity you can see a capacitor as an elastic membrane blocking the fluid. If you use dc it will stop the flow but if you use ac it will allow short movements in both directions.
Nice one. I hope this gets upvoted further than duplicate comments about ElectroBoom and water near electronics.
oh yeah that's very good
Actually thats a great analogy. Most houses that use well water, will somewhere have a tank (usually in the basement) with a diaphragm inside that maintains pressure (voltage) on the system, even if the well pump is turned off. It stores some water and can push some out if the well is turned off. It also has the ability to dampen intermittent pressure spikes from a pump turning off and on again (much like capacitors are used to smooth out voltage spikes.
That's the best analogy first I heard was from BigClive. In this case I suppose that the two 50m long wires (red and black) would be acting as two parallel hoses (like to conductive plates in a capacitor) where the "live hose" is inducting pulses to the "neutral hose" because of the very pulsing nature of the water supply (AC current) even when the circuit is open. Actually the best analogy I have heard about how electricity flow through a conductor is given by ElectroBoom. With this two analogies, the one from BigClive and the one from ElectroBoom, it becomes very easy to understand the "led bulb that doesn't turn off" phenomenon.
That's really nice! I really want to build something now!
I got multicoloured Christmas lights last year and wound up keeping them up around my room.. I had been wondering whether maybe some of the colouring was a little bit glow in the dark or something but now I think I was seeing a very small, quite faint version of this effect while the whole string was plugged into the wall. Neat!
You can make sure by checking do the lights have an ac to dc adapter
Christmas lights are a produc5 of slavery
@@norml.hugh-mann bruh shut up you're probably typing that in a phone that's a product of slavery as well
I have some LED Christmas lights that dim-glow even when switched off, but in this case its multiple strings outside - enough to go all the way around the house (no capacitors or AC adapters or anything, simply 120v mains-powered lights). ...I'm guessing because the neutral is switched (I know it is), or there's some sorta weird EMF between that group of light-strings, and the others (on a separate circuit) that run right along beside them. (all lights are ofcourse taken down & put away after holiday season!)
actually this effect does not occur and much less if but in the whole load, if the load is wired in parallel, but only if the switch branches off with a long cable. but there are series AC christmas lights too.. :D
3:40 - while it’s technically drawing power through the wires acting as a capacitor from nearby electrical cables I don’t think electricity cost from these things being barely on is a concern. If these LEDs are so efficient that the wires themselves can power it I can’t imagine it costing you more than $0.10/year if that.
Dads be like: we'll never financially recover from this
This is also the reason for PowerLine LAN Adapters work actross different phases as there is usually a long enough Piece with both Phases run in parallel to create this capacitive coupling. Works with 2-phased in US the same as for 3-phased in Germany/Europe, too.
Having done three years of electrical in high school, the reason its staying on in a quick simple explanation, the "Hot" wire is being continuously fed from the breaker. The "Neutral" wire is continuously taking the energy back. The hot is emitting and magnetic pulse that the white is taking it back to the ground, completing the circuit. The bulb is just sensitive enough to be powered off of that flow. It generally doesn't increase your electricity bill.
That only works if you're explaining it to someone with 3 years of electrical in high school as well, though. I don't have an understanding (knowledge vs. understanding) of what most of those words mean.
What do you mean generally? Why would it/ wouldn’t it?
So you mean it’s like borrowing electricity right? xD
@@staalman1226 i took a 9 month course ....understood it fine.....literally covered stuff like this the first month....maybe your school just sucked?
@@christianhernandez7740 Once again, you took a nine month course. I haven't completed any courses in electrical . . . I was just saying that it's only a "quick simple explanation" if you have completed one of those courses, or have a much better understanding than I do. Sorry for the confusion
Talk about how dangerous electricity is, play with water over all the electrical components
If the water is even somewhat pure, it's not that bad. ElectroBoom has a video on this exact topic actually.
Smug Anime Girl so you think it is pure water inside that syringe? 😂
Apart from him gesturing around a live wire. Jesus that's not setting a good example. I appreciate the explanation but damn, I fail my students if they leave a live wire in a test installation and here is a bad example.
I noticed he wore massive gloves, then played with water then took the gloves off, then turned it on again.
@@reneg8 Go watch ElectroBoom's channel and then come back to complain here.
finally an answer! ive been noticing this for awhile and never took the time to try this... thanks
Talk about random, found you today and somehow wrapped my mind around this concept. Very interesting. You really know about energy, like Einstein's level IMO. Thank you!
1:00 Steve: Uses isolating Gloves ElectroBoom: Touches line wires from a microwave transformer with his bare hands because he want to build a jacobs ladder
There is areason why hes called electroBOOM Y'know.
This used to happen to me when I was using cheap led retrofits and I could not for the life of me think of why. This makes so much sense cause it always happened in older developments. They used to carry feeds to the lights and do a switch loop. That's why a lot of old switches have no neutrals in them. Thank you for solving a very old mystery for me!
Nowadays switches cut off positive and negative wire so you dont have a closed circuit. That pretty much solves the problem with induction.
He didn't solve it because he didn't explain the correct reason it's way more simple, it's just AC or alternating current, LED bulbs take less than a volt of alternating current to Glow even if a single wire is connected it's called the B field kzhead.info/sun/lbFwY5yFjItjgYU/bejne.html kzhead.info/sun/ksaghd1usXNmp6s/bejne.html
@@GuninGamesThank you!
ive got the same issue with a movement sensor and no switch, but i assume that works similiarly, very interesting video
Those are soem amazing skills you demonstrate by grabbing the disassembled discapacitor with scissors and putting it together again into a working capacitor!
I had a similar situation with the early LED bulbs that I used to replace my halogen bulbs in my highlight fixtures. My best guess was that the magnetic effect of the copper wiring provided just enough energy to keep them dimly lit. I was extremely surprised, but that was that: there was always a slight glow.
Take out the light switch, and you'll see two cables: one coming from your breaker box, the other going to the lamp. You'll notice that one wire from those cables is connected straight through, and the other goes through the switch. Turn that around: have the ones that are connected straight through go through the switch instead, and connect up the ones that previously went through the switch. Your glow will be gone.
Magnetic? No, this is just because th plus wire is still connected.
@@EvenTheDogAgrees Hi, sorry to comment on an old post of yours, but I just want to clarify.. So I cut the one that goes straight through, make that go through the switch, then take the one from the switch, and connect it to the wire I just cut..?
@@neilsison7109 Hey, no worries, man. Besides, that post wasn't that old. 😉 First of all, it's best to test that this is indeed the problem. Take the front plate off the switch, and with one of those electrical tester screwdrivers, make sure that when the light is off, the terminals of the switch do not carry a voltage. If you've never worked with these, they're pretty simple to use: they have a metal cap that you touch with your thumb or finger, and then you touch the tip of the screwdriver to the terminal you wish to test. If the light comes on, there's voltage on the terminal. Test it first on something you know carries a voltage, like a wall outlet. Also, and this goes without saying: don't touch the tip during this process; only the handle and the cap. I mean, you'd still know if the terminal carries a voltage or not, but the goal here is to do it without injuring yourself. 😂 As for resolving it, it all depends on how your house is wired up. Which also depends on when it was wired up. In older installations, it was common to use individual wires. In such a case, you may not even have a cable going straight through, since it might as well have been routed via a shorter path directly to the lamp. But assuming there's one going straight through, and it's not the earth wire, you cut that one and connect both ends to both ends of the switch, while connecting the one that was in the switch together with a screw terminal or Wago clamp terminal or similar. In more modern installations, cables with multiple conductors are used. If you do a search for "xvb cable", you'll see what I mean. In that case, the cable is cut completely, and one conductor is switched, while the other is connected with a screw terminal or Wago clamp connector. If that's the case, just switch the one from the screw terminal to the switch, and the one that was on the switch to the screw terminal. Important to note: if the light can be switched from multiple switches, then you need to identify the one connected to the breaker box, as you need to make this modification on the one where the current "enters" the circuit. I don't know what part of the world you live in, but there are probably standards for colour coding mains wiring. Here in Belgium it's blue for neutral, brown for mains, and yellow/green striped for the earth wire. In case of three phase, or multiway switching, black and grey may be used for the extra phases or the signal wires connecting the multiway switches to each other. The specific colours may differ for your country. You always want to end up in a situation where the wire with the colour for neutral does not carry a voltage. So if you find yourself with a blue and a brown wire (or your local equivalents), where the blue carries voltage and the brown doesn't, the switcharoo should not be made in the switch, but in the breaker box (or junction box, if it's connected through one of those), because it means the screwup is upstream of the switch. However, a word of warning: you're working with mains voltage. If unsure, or if all of this sounds too complicated, get someone who knows about electricity to help you out or do it for you. Or pay an electrician they're a lot cheaper than the undertaker, from what I understand. 😉
New bulb in the hood over our range, works on high, works on low, works on off-erm, works when it's OFF? Thanks ever so much for this explanation. Also, extremely impressed with your ability to assemble a capacitor. When you were done, it looked as good as new . . .
You did a really good job putting that capacitor back together.
I've had this problem with some lights i installed for a customer, 1 reason i explained was that the design of the lamp needed a bleed resistor across it. I had 8 in a chandalier & the only way to cure it at that time was to put an old filament lamp in place , effectively acting as a bleed resistor.
You did an incredible job of assembling that capacitor with those tin snips, nicely done!
I think he just played it in reverse
@@orlagskapten9829 He was joking.
@@orlagskapten9829 This really clears things up. Here I was thinking he could manipulate time. Imagine my shock.
Love, love, love, love, how easy you make it to understand things. Honestly, it's amazing how skilled you are at explaining complicated concepts using simple analogies and illustrations. Cant get enough of your videos Steve!!
Man I've seen the "electrons in a circuit is NOT like water in a pipe" videos and now this makes more sense
I did like watching you put the capacitor back together when you were done with it. It's good to not be wasteful.
I was waiting for him to accidentally brush the live wires while it was plugged in with his sweeping hand gestures.
Eh it would be edited out, only electroBOOM intentionally puts those in for our entertainment.
@@dieseltechie7830 nahh.. that's not gonna happen. coz LED bulb has only a low power DC input... and that power wont even kill a mouse... ^_^
@@silaynons @ 3:40 in the video it say AC 230V on the white circuit board lol
@@dieseltechie7830 Or PhotonicInduction! He is REALLY crazy!!! kzhead.info/tools/l9OJE9OpXui-gRsnWjSrlA.html
me too. I would have used Wagos to make life easier and just cap the ends.
Steve Mould, love your videos but I’m fairly certain you have this wrong here. This is likely an incident of inductive coupling. The alternating current can establish resonance in the Line side conductor when it is broken many wire lengths longer the wavelength of the alternating power source. The oscillating movement of the electrons in the Line side wire create an alternating magnetic field along the length of the wire according to the right hand rule. The second conductor in the cable (neutral or ground or load side) runs parallel and directly adjacent to the Line side wire. It is in the alternating magnetic field which as it fluctuates induces a weak oscillating electric field in the neutral/ground/load side conductor. The oscillating electric fields in both conductors are out of phase and amplitude creating a weak electrical potential allowing electrons to flow back and forth across the LED’s. Typically this is limited with a low pass RLC circuit, which I’m guessing is insufficient or lacking in the cheaper bulb. Also possible that the cheaper bulb has an inferior diode that allows enough backflow current to setup the oscillating resonant current in the long wire length. Capacitors store charge by holding electrons from jumping across a dielectric gap. When the circuit is closed, the potential difference exceeds the dielectric constant and the electrons rush past the dielectric gap rapidly delivering stored energy.
Much simpler than all that BS don’t put a switch on the neutral side of it because there will always be voltage at the bulb allowing it to glow expensive LEDs will flash when they have voltage to them but neutral gets broken
@@sparkylife4896 Exactly. Had the same issue with some LED TL's when I repaced the old TL armatures. Took me all of 5 seconds to realise that whoever did that installation cut the neutral rather than the live. Swapped the cables, and the glow was gone.
No inductance or capacitance, the extra wire is acting as ground and what we see is bleed voltage. HIs friends light sockets are always hot. Very dangerous.
"many wire lengths longer the wavelength of the alternating power source" Do you mean the wire is longer than the wavelength of the AC? 300,000,000 m/s / 50 hertz = 6000 kilometre... p.s. it's capacitance.
Same thing with .5w led bulbs in house
in the 1980s I tried to switch off a short 4 watt fluorescent lamp with a switch. I was only able to dim them but not turn them off. I had also run a two prong cable to the switch. In the hallway there are often buttons with glow lamps in them. Only a two-prong cable is used and the glow lamp is connected across the switch. That's enough to glow as long as the switch is open.
Switches with a neon lamp in the handle (nightlight)can also keep led lamps on a tiny bit too. We have a bedroom with this effect. Unscrewing the lamp makes the light go out on the switch too!
Should have sent it to Big Clive. This is literally his entire channel.
I was looking for someone to mention BC…so now do we need a three-way collaboration?
I'm pretty sure Clive has already mentioned this effect in one of his videos.
Clive would probably like Mr BOOM did a good job. Enjoyable and funny
I've never got into ElectroBoom content. BigClive is a lot more down to earth. No pun intended.
@@bolton368 Clive does watch Mehdi, he's mentioned his channel a couple of times during rambles.
The old tube lights in my room used to flicker at some intervals even when switched off. I guess that should have been same phenomenon, just its starter capacitor getting charged and then releasing voltage when it becomes enough for creating arc.
Did you have an illuminated switch? Those pass a very small amount of power through the bulb to light the switch (they don't directly connect to the neutral). incandecents would never light from it, far to little power. CFLs, LEDs, etc slowly build up a charge and try to light, instantly draining the charge. hence the flicker.
@@zolartan4442 yes
@@zolartan4442 yeah I found that shit out yesterday. Dangerous as fuck!
Same thing happened with a CFL at a hotel I stayed at
CFL lights can also emit a glow from ambient electromagnetic fields, microwaves, e.t.c. they also contain built in capacitors that often take a crap and don't discharge properly.
I have bulbs (GU10) all around the house for about 10 years, and most have this effect. At first I thought I had a wiring problem, and chase around with multimeters and insulation testers. Now I realise it is due to the very high impedance of the GU10, compared to a standard Swan/Edison bulb, and currents being INDUCED in the lighting circuit from all the other electrical wiring in the house. The bulbs are such high efficiency, and so cheap to run, that I lived with it...but the bedrooms were a problems - still glowing at night. The addition of a bleed resistor in parallel fixed that, I forget the size, but 270K rings a bell, sufficient to reduce the current in the bulb such that it do not light up. And on cost of these bulbs - I replaced 180 watts in my kitchen with 30 watts of GU10, and get far superior lighting.
This happens in panel built controls especially with float switches or when AC is bundled with DC wiring, also happens when people coil up mains wiring inside electronic panels, a 240v cable laid across a microcontroller will crash it.
The voltage that is induced into the second wire is only capable of very low current, almost nothing, so the other bulb that draws more current is not likely to glow because there is almost no current flow. The voltage is induce from one wire to an adjacent wire through capacitive(and inductive) coupling, this is why you don't run audio and video wires/cables next to power wires/cables. Capacitive: the voltage in one wire effects the electrons in the other wire. Inductive: The current flow in the wire creates a moving magnetic field which will induce a current/voltage(closed loop/open loop) into an adjacent wire.
I loved the way you showed the construction of the capacitor by reversing/rewinding the video. I didn't see the symbol and only noticed when I saw that very odd plier movement.
I had this with some led bulbs in my living room, ended up changing them out a week later, but this certainly explains a mystery I’ve been wondering about the past few months.
As an electrician we experience this often if there are a lot of cables laying together or in old houses where the insulation around the wires is bad. One way to deal with this problem is by inserting a resistor parallel to the light bulp this will eleminate the capacive charge from the wires
Won't that just cause the resistor to dissipate the same energy as heat?
@@HappyBeezerStudios depends on the rating of the resistor.
insert a X capacitor to the two side of the bulb,when the circuit turn off,the voltage of the bulb will remain the same.
I am sure your customers appreciate the higher energy bill from the parasitic current draw you’ve gifted them. You’re and electrician you say?
@@mariocueva8700 what did you expect? -He could also bill you a 100K to rewire your entire home... maybe you prefer a 50$ bill and a few pennies spent on electric bills going foreward? Maybe you shouod have maintained your home on a runnikg basis instead of blaming the electrician for your lousy home installation? And finally: Your ood glowbulbs also drew current while being off. You just didn't see them glow because they let off the inducted leak current as a bit of heat instead of light. The kicker: You glowbulb was 60-100w and might use a few watts when off... your led might light up a little when off, but it only uses a fraction of the wattage you glowbuob would...
I have seen it at my home, and it glows even when another appliance on the same switchboard is turned on. It may be a capacitative induction on the adjacent wires of the active wires due to a/c current.
No, you just have wrong (on neutral) switch.
As an addendum to this certain mains led's can be made to flash once the switch has been turned off. If the Line and Neutral have been swapped at the switch i.e the Switch is breaking the ircuit in the Neutral not the Line so the luminaire is energised to ground by the circuitry which can cause the led to flash once the capacitors in the circuit reach full charge and discharge through the individual cob's
Hi Steve, I just stumbled across this video. Thank you for the insight. I have some cheap led spotlights that show this effect, so I am doubly interested in seeking some crucial answers to the following. If the switch is off, why do you say this effect cost users money? If the power source to the glow is from the long-wire capacitor, when the switch is off, why do you say the light glows indefinitely, when it should fade with time? I am sure viewers would be interested in a further short video that clarifies the answers to these questions. Every best wish for your channel.
I had a night light/reading lamp like this, was super confusing to me. Thank you for explaining it!
One thing I notice, the UK bulbs appear to have a small transformer built into them along with a capacitor and probably some other components. The Chinese bulb had none of this. It looks like the Chinese ball may actually just simply use a resistive load to reduce the voltage down to a totolerable level for the leds. I suspect what's actually happening is that the coil of wire and the brake in the switch are acting as a coil capacitor circuit and causing the circuit to ring, where the switch acts as a small capacitor and the wiring acts as an inductor. I really wish you would have used in oscilloscope to better see the leakage current through the system. The explanation of the wiring acting as a capacitor, would not explain why breaking the circuit with a switch causes the light to remain on. Electric current would still have to get through the gap in the switch somehow. What would make more sense is if the wiring were acting as an inductor and the switch acting as the very small value capacitor which with alternating current, will allow current to leak through into the bulb. Since the Chinese bulb does not appear to have any kind of step down transformer to isolate it, I believe it is this leakage current that's keeping the bulb dimly lit.
capacitors let through AC current. Hence Xc=1/ωC (the formula to calculate the impedance of a capacitor for a given frequency and capacitance). Better designed LED bulbs fix this problem by having a resistor between phase and neutral to shunt this tiny current.
I bought Wilko branded LED candle-shape bulbs that were not brilliant quality. They were put in a light fitting that held 5 of them. When the bulbs failed, they wouldn't light up (of course), but when the light fitting was switched off, all the bulbs would go out, except the failed ones, which came on with a dim glow. After about 5 minutes, they would fade down to off.
A few weeks ago in the USA I installed a 115V led bulb that does this. Although it's dim when the wall switch is off it still does produce light.
I had this on a large crane a few years ago. The power for the crane was picked up from bars that ran the length of the main beam. There were three lamps which indicated to the operators that the power was switched on and non of the fuses were blown, these were six meters up and needed replacing every few years, so to reduce working at height risks these were replaced with LEDs which did not need replacing as often. Unfortunately they did not turn off when a fuse blew, resulting in maintenance loosing a day chasing the wrong fault down. Induction can also hold relays in for long cable runs, especially when you replace old inefficient relays with modern ones...
The horror of the fact that you are sending a Thundering Herd of defenseless Souls into the clutches of electroboom.😁
You are explaining simple concept in difficult terms.
I've experienced this effect! I had an Ethernet cable which ran from the room that I rent to the modem just outside, but it was way too long for this purpose, so most of it sat coiled in my room. This cable was old and busted, the shielding had become useless. This coil of cable ended up becoming a sort of electromagnet, and causing EMI for the house's Wi-Fi connection. I fought for months that my Ethernet cable wasn't the problem, because why would I sacrifice my phone's ability to connect to WiFi? And the Ethernet cable was just going to a spare hobby box with no WiFi card. It wasn't using bandwidth. They thought that it was the modem "prioritizing" the Ethernet connection, which is... not a thing. But then I realized what was going on, and it was like a lightbulb went off (ha) It was the cable, but for a completely different reason!
I've seen the same effect in my homemade LED bulbs and learned about the capacitance in the wiring from Big Clive, but you presented and explained it very well.
A couple of years ago, this happened to me when I fitted six of these bulbs into two ceiling lights (three each) and they wouldn't turn off, so I abandoned the attempt. I couldn't understand what was happening, but this has explained all to me so thank you. I kind of thought it may have an induced current from other cables. I will try again with filament type candle LEDs. Thanks again.
No, the problem is you should never switch on neutral cable. It is prohibited.
Finally I got answer to this question why my bulb is not switching off ) Thank you!
Loving the red/black old colour code wire. Really useful for plausible deniability for new house circuits... erm I mean testing lamps.
7:38 Love to use of reverse playback to show how a real capacitor works. No visualizations, you see the real thing. This is a great channel.
"They're not your typical screw-in Edison" You mean screw you Edison.
shes made of iron sir, she'll sink.
@@alanssnack1192 yeah that's the kind of statement we'd expect from Trump.
Is that a line from "The Current War"?
That maniac Thomas Alva Edison deliberately electrocuted an elephant in an attempt to prove that DC was a better choice than AC, as proposed by Nikola Tesla. I would hope that Edison is burning well keeping the demons in the Hell House warm.
@@Zarrar2802 *B U I L D A W A L L*
I have 2 led lights that do this. Thank you for telling me why! Couldn't figure it out myself.
Our 48" Harbor Freight lights out in our shed do the same thing. They've been "in Standby" for over 2 weeks without any power to them, but yet they still have the LED Glow
I'm an electronics engineer and understood the nature of the phenomenon pretty quick... Your voice and fascination with the explanation just kept me watching all the way through
lol you have a crush for him
Or maybe I appreciated the subject matter and the way it was presented, exactly like I said? Also I'm gay. So no.
the schematic for the "round and round and round housed in a single casing" gave me a real belly laugh. thanks for that
LEDs don’t require that much voltage, and when you switch it off there’s still enough to light it up just really dim
That's nonsense
KZhead: Does Electricity REALLY Flow? (Electrodynamics) KZhead: How Electricity Actually Works
The anxiety of watching his hands moving next to the live wires when he talks 🥴
It's a camera trick. If you look, the wires are out of focus because they're much closer to the camera, or spliced in from a second shot.
Zero anxiety. Because I am not an idiot.
@@watcherofwatchers I was just writing a comment no need to reply to it like an idiot
I had this happen on my chandelier when we switched to led 5 years ago , i thought the wire was acting like a capacitor. it always made me scratch my noodle
That's because it's your head you have to scratch, duh!
Don't scratch too much, your noodle might lose some electrons
wow i did not know that a big bundle of wires could act as capactor. thank for explaining this so nicely.
The biggest issue is that our AC systems use a push / pull system rather than the two sides actually switching polarity. This is also why most US plugs are keyed to only go in one way. Among other reasons like rare safety conditions, some devices would not function correctly if plugged in the opposite way because complex electronics have to factor in the amount of power that is lost as it goes through the system. If power were coming the opposite direction it could result in incorrect voltages and currents at certain points.
I like the cut edit at 0:40. Like you just decided to cut to the chase.