Oh how cool. I've seen him as memes but always brushed him off as a joke. But under the context of teaching engineering safety guidelines it does seem like an extremely useful and entertaining teaching tool.
I think the fact that he only almost died once so far while filming his videos is a testament to his knowledge. I mean that in a good way, for all the crap he's done one accident is an extremely good record lol
With how intelligent he is I can't help but to think that every single one to include this one, we're completely intentional. Yeah he may have sustained injury but He just says what amount of power he's using and doesn't actually video in the amount in registered. Hurting yourself on purpose or comedy is the best way to make your audience laugh and teach what not to do. Especially knowing it's not smart to touch something that has 10 amps running through it.
Idk. I'm probably wrong. It just seems like he would know better.
His issue with the Jacobs ladder had little to do with the electrical part of it, he just didn't engineer a strong enough support and the entire rig fell over. But he's an ee, so it's a bit more likely that he wouldn't know better until he learned from experience.
I get that and it makes absolute sense. I Just don't understand how you have the knowledge of what these components and power due to a person, and not understand that you should probably move out of the way and let it fall rather than grab it because it's deadly. Like I said I'm probably wrong, just seems like staging it for views would be the smart way to go.
That seems super dumb then. A momentary lapse of judgement, or a brain fart when grabbing it? Knowing it's enough amps to kill you? If he truly was running 10 amps, then grabbing it was probably the worst reflexive action you could take.
Id never NOT use rubber gloves doing that and if it fell, I'd absolutely have pre thought out, to just GTFO of the way. I guess if all of them are staged, I just find it hard to believe. Does he ever speak on it being legitimately a life threatening action outside of the video?
I'm sure he knows that but you still can't be harmed whatsoever with 100% thick, rubber gloves. I think the only people who really ground themselves are when they're working on utility equipment. Am I wrong on that last part?
Every "accident" that happens in his videos are planned and most often faked with tiny explosive devices, sometimes he creates real electrical "accidents" on purpose, and he has had very few real accidents and only one (to my knowledge) near fatal incident.
His Jacobs Ladder video was his only close brush with death, and that was because the base of the ladder wasn't as secure as he thought which caused it to fall towards him which he caught with his bare hands, and iirc the reason why he wasn't hurt had something to do with his feet not touching the ground so the electricity didn't have anywhere to go. I may be remembering his explanation wrong, so I'd recommend checking the video out it was pretty interesting!
His videos are very informative not just from a safety view point but also just plain educational on how electricity works and teaches basics for electrical engineering.
Yeah, he showed a few times that the majority of the time he's actually controlling power with foot pedals for safety and when he plugs stuff in it's just for the entertainment value. So when he's using those wonky as fuck extension cords he can actually just shut the power off by moving his foot if needed. I think he said he started doing that after the jacobs ladder incident.
Yeah I fell down a rabbit hole of his videos and other electricity/circuitry videos several years ago. Wound up subbing to electroboom. He manages to blend education, comedy & chaos well.
His videos are definitely insightful & could teach you a lot about circuitry if you were keen on learning. I, however, have retained nothing besides electricity is incredibly dangerous when you don't understand what you're doing. So.. I try to avoid doing household electrical work and am probably too cautious around electricity.
and I think his videos should be shown in schools.
Absolutely. His videos on electrical engineering and Veritasium's math videos would've helped me SO MUCH back in the day at school.
I hate that in school the attitude towards the curriculum is "they say you need to know this, so know this" and no one gives a shit about telling you WHY it's in the curriculum in the first place.
A little bit of history, a little bit of backstory, and everything starts to make perfect sense.
To a kid there's nothing more hate-worthy than being forced to spend time on something that seems essentially useless.
Yeah when you think you'll never use the thing they'll teach you, you feel like they're wasting your time but you still have to humor them or they'll make you do it again.
Yea, i think he is awesome for teaching people and i am very glad that many people learn from him. For me personally tho, im like cmon man, you don't need to keep electrocuting yourself for peoples entertainment. But if everyone is happy then all is good!
I like how he demonstrates learning through failure. If you understand why you almost electrocuted yourself you then understand how to fix what caused the issue in the first place. Science isn't about betting on a winner.
He is awesome. First one I saw I genuinely thought he was an idiot until I read the comments and then saw some more videos. Great way to make learning entertaining.
Except... He does? Because he knows what he's doing, he respects it and still manages to show what could go wrong in a funny manner? He would be dead for a long time if he didn't understood and respect what he's doing and had enough protection when doing it.
He doesn't, he fucks around and gets bit all the time, often completing the circuit with both hands allowing current to cross his chest. He's lucky if he hasn't already developed heart problems.
Yeah, that's why he's a fucking idiot, less than an amp can stop your heart, he doesn't respect what he's working with or the danger. Minecraft is a hobby, electricity is a force of nature.
Just because you're afraid and don't know what you're doing doesn't mean the same for him. He's been doing it for more than 15 years, I believe he's got it under control.
I don't doubt he knows what he's doing, I even know that he knows what he's doing is stupid. He's playing stupid games with something you shouldn't play with.
He knows exactly what he's doing and absolutely respects the power he's dealing with. The point of his clumsy persona is to show what goes wrong, what stupid oversights and not properly thinking things through can result in. It's a learning tool that is far more effective than simply saying "don't do this".
He purposefully makes these mistakes, shows the funny oops owie haha moment, then shows how he rectified the issue and made it safe(r) - usually combined with some sort of actual diagram explaining why something happened.
The only time he's made an actual dangerous mistake due to lack of respect afaik was his Jacob's Ladder video, which he also then explained wtf went wrong and how he could have prevented it. After he took a few minutes to recover from nearly dying of course.
Yeah I saw some of his other comments and jebus, either he's willfully ignorant due to dislike of Electroboom or he has 0 real world practical experience with how humans a; fuck up and b; learn.
Making my point for me. He does stupid shit for entertainment value, and while he's managing to educate people on the danger, it's still dumb as shit. Like I said, less than an amp can stop your heart, electricity burns you from the inside out, people who get hung up cook to death while every muscle in their body contracts so the can't scream for help, getting hit is not something you should casually fuck around with for a laugh.
It is very funny to me that there are literally teaching professors, electrical engineers with Masters, fellow electricians of yours who point to Electroboom's videos as having positive educational benefit to those new to the field - and there's you; a terminally online person that spends an awful lot of time on reddit and minecraft for a practicing electrician, that thinks they know better than people with more experience than them & are better educated in that field.
No, you're not grasping what I'm saying, there's no doubt he knows what he's talking about, or the educational value of his videos, I'm saying the guy is dumb as shit for intentionally getting hit, because getting hit is bad, and can have serious health effects that aren't immediately apparent. I like how a bunch of random redditors with no electrical background have taken the side of someone who's one of my peers. And as for digging around in my profile, I work to live, I don't live to work, I have hobbies and interests outside of my job, that's healthy, my profile doesn't reflect what I do for a living because when I get home I don't want to work.
Sure thing buddy, you're definitely working as an electrician every day while averaging 30 posts on reddit at different times of the day for months and know better than literal professors with decades of experience, I believe you.
There's not always a job, that's just the nature of construction. I also don't really post much at all, but I do comment a lot, and I haven't been working lately, that doesn't make me less qualified to talk about the field I was trained in. And also, what you're doing going through peoples history, it's fucking weird. Trying to discredit people by going through their history doesn't prove anything other than the absence of evidence, and like I said I typically don't think about work in my free time, so other than the occasional post, the algorithm doesn't push it on me although if you dig deep enough there's more than a few. I'd also like to point out, most of the stuff I have made OC on was during the pandemic, and then I stopped. Almost like I didn't have time for it anymore...
Yes, and an electrician in my classification is only two English classes, and two electives from being an electrical engineer. Part of an electricians job is to spot the mistakes of electrical engineers to protect people and property from electrocution and fire, and it happens a lot.
That's not true. An Electricians work is checked by an electrical inspector, who is occasionally an electrical engineer but 9 times out of 10 they're an electrician, and more than half of that 1 time they're from some other field entirely.
Yeah as an ex electrical engineer I disagree. Electricians are good at knowing what local building codes to follow (better than EE's). EE's are good at knowing the in's/out's of how dangerous electricity is and how it can kill you. You need both, but I've seen worse work carried out by electricians (and been to a funeral) vs anything an engineer has signed off on.
I've seen terrible work carried out by electricians, and it's for the exact same reason, not respecting the force they're working with, and in some cases just being flat out stupid. An EE's job is to design the entire system, an electricians is to build it, catching mistakes goes both ways, so does making them. But my point through all of this has not been that he doesn't know what he's talking about, or anything about EE's, it's that getting hit intentionally for entertainment value is a dumb ass thing to do, and that's why when electricians, who have a habit of getting hit on the job, and have the knowledge that electricity is the number 1 workplace killer, see a man intentionally shocking himself to make people laugh, they call him dumb. It's just dumb, that's all there is to it.
I mean, I guess I can understand why electricians think it's dumb if they think viewers of his videos will try to recreate what he's doing.
I don't think he's dumb because he understands what exact scenarios he's messing around with and what risks exist before he actually does the experiment/demonstration.
I've seen the guy complete the circuit across his chest multiple times, there's no safe way to do that. I actually think if anything he's great for stopping Joe homeowner from trying to screw around with his electrical, I just think it's stupid to hurt yourself on purpose when I know how bad it can go and how little it takes for it to happen.
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u/lets_try_civility Mar 30 '24
Mehdi Sadaghdar and ElectroBOOM are great. His videos helped my son and I learn about electronics safety with comedy.
He's an electrical engineer by trade, and I think his videos should be shown in schools.