ballast leaking electricity?

[clubtan1]

Last time. NO, current does NOT generate a voltage. A spinning magnetic field can generate a voltage but NOT current (amperes). Current is a way to measure the FLOW of electrons and is measured in amperes or amps. AND YES, voltage IS inversely proportional to current. Example - take a wire with a 120 volt potential and hold it to a grounded source. The VOLTAGE will go to zero and the current (amperes) will go to infinity and will stay that way until the voltage is interrupted/stopped. OHMS LAW is just that, a LAW of physics. Read it carefully. If I understand what you stated and under the same conditions, the 120 volts AND the current will rise??? Impossible! but try it out for yourself and see what you get. The formula is 120 volts x 0 resistance/hard ground = infinity amperes.

[mr belvedere]

The thing is, the ballast tray on this model is a box of spaghetti that would put mama Corleone's Sunday feast to shame, but there is no way a ballast wire could be pinched under a ballast, or between a ballast and the frame of the tray. All the wires are connected to a bus of blade connectors on the sidewall of the tray. Could there be some arcing from time to time between the blades of the bus that is transferring to the frame of the tray, which shares a ground with the bench and canopy?

[Electric_Sun]

Originally Posted by clubtan1

Last time. NO, current does NOT generate a voltage. A spinning magnetic field can generate a voltage but NOT current (amperes). Current is a way to measure the FLOW of electrons and is measured in amperes or amps. AND YES, voltage IS inversely proportional to current. Example - take a wire with a 120 volt potential and hold it to a grounded source. The VOLTAGE will go to zero and the current (amperes) will go to infinity and will stay that way until the voltage is interrupted/stopped. OHMS LAW is just that, a LAW of physics. Read it carefully. If I understand what you stated and under the same conditions, the 120 volts AND the current will rise??? Impossible! but try it out for yourself and see what you get. The formula is 120 volts x 0 resistance/hard ground = infinity amperes.

Club, that is not correct, let me try to unravel this .
voltage is DIRECTLY proportional to current.
If you have a 120 volt source with an infinite current capacity, you take that source and put it across a dead short, the current will theoretically go to infinity, but you have not changed voltage, you have changed resistance to 0 and current is inversely proportional to resistance. Now a real world 120 volt source does not have an infinite current capacity and when resistance goes to 0 and current attempts to go to infinity, voltage will start to drop towards 0, as voltage drops, current will no longer go towards infinity and begin to drop as well. This is a bad example of ohms law since it can be easily misunderstood.
I will explain what actually happens in your example using ohms law.
Say the normal circuit is supplied with 120volts, the resistance is 100 ohms, therefore the current would be 1.2 amps. 120v=100*1.2a agreed?
Now in the example if we change the supply voltage to 240volts, resistance is constant 100ohms, therefore the current will be 2.4amps. 240v=100*2.4a This shows direct propotionality. Volts up / current up.
Now we have been talking about resistive circuits, don't confuse this with inductive or reluctance circuits (totally different formulas).
Ok, now back to the ground or dead short. Using 120volt, we take the 100 ohm load and short it out or take it to ground, therefore 0 ohms , correct? Ok so by the ohms law 120v=0*Amps so amps will go towards infinity, right? Now this is where things get misunderstood, in practical application a short will cause current to shoot up and voltage to go down toward 0, inversely proportional, right? but that is not what is actually happening. What is happening is the supply is 120volts, the load goes to 0, now at 0 ohm load the resistance of the wires become relavant (while extremely small, wire has a resistance). If the wire has a resistance of (for example, I'll picka number out of the air, probably not accurate) say 0.1 ohms. This is an irrelevant value when the normal load is 100 ohms, but when the load is 0 ohms, the wire now becomes the load and it is across the wire that the supply voltage exists, and no longer across what we used to call the load. Ok now in a normal 120volt utility supply, there is somewhere up the line a transformer. That transformer has a limited current capacity. Again for this example I will just pick a number out of the air. Lets say it has a capacity of 200 amps. So now the formula for this circuit would be Volts=0.1*200 , so volts are now 20 volts but the 20 volts is across the supply wire and not the load and resistance is what has changed.

To figure proportionallity between volts and amps, resistance must stay constant and when resistance stays constant, voltage is directly proportional to current.

( I think I just blew a brain fuse, it too late to be thinking about this kind of stuff)

[Electric_Sun]

My sincere apologies to videogirl for hijacking the thread, I'll go stand in the corner for a while. Someone come get me when MacGyver comes on.

[videogirl25]

200volts with 3ohms = 66.66667amps
200volts with 2ohms = 100amps
200volts with 1ohm = 200amps
200volts with 0ohms = infinity amperes

[mr belvedere]

**** baby!! ~somebody help me up~

[Electric_Sun]

ROFLMAOBASB right mr b

[mr belvedere]

... BASB? WTF does that stand for?!

[Electric_Sun]

they don't make the product, they make the product better!

OMG, I'm up way too late... I hope my mom doesn't find out.

[mr belvedere]

Slick. But really, what does it stand for?