500ft extension cord?

[Jayman17]

I think the first tangle will determine the lengths it gets cut into.

Yeah imagine getting a knot at the midpoint, you have to string 250’ through to clear the knot.

 

[smackey05]

I struggle to keep a 25' extension cord organized.... lol

 

[Hobby_Man22]

It's only a roughly 21% voltage drop

well we do have 120-125v these days and plenty of things run just fine off of 110v. Something to take into account I suppose

 

[TheLawnRanger]

My aunt had a phone cord that long. It was only four feet when she bought it.

 

[JohnDeere]

5 volts by the time you get to the end lol.

 

[Stuart in MN]

If a person had some LED Christmas lights on a tree at the end of their driveway it would probably work okay, but it is a lot of money to spend on something with limited uses.

 

[bb29510]

i would hate to pickup 500 feet to throw in truck

 

[Chance]

Was laughing about this with my wife and she asked an interesting question. If somebody put this on a cord reel and powered it up with a lot still coiled on the reel (only used like 50 feet), wouldn't all that coiled wire create a significant magnetic field?
Way beyond my pay grade, but I'm guessing we have some with the technical skills to figure that out.

Its a really good question, and the answer reveals a lot about what goes on in the magnetic field outside a wire that is carrying a current.

Since the current runs down to the socket end on the hot wire, and returns on the neutral, the magnetic fields around the wires are in opposite directions as you look down the wire. If the wires had no space between their centers (not possible), then then fields would cancel exactly and there would be no electromagnetic radiation detectable outside. The more they are separated, the more the fields won't cancel and the part that isn't cancelled gets radiated outward.

So why don't you feel the magnetic attraction like an electromagnet, even weakly?

Well electromagnets use DC current. They force magnetic north to point in a constant direction, just like a bar magnet. But an extension cable carries AC current, so the field that does radiate is changing direction 60 times a second. This acts like a de-magnetizer instead of like an electromagnet, because it is constantly changing the direction of North. If you were to lay an extension cable on top of a cassette tape long enough, the weak radiated field would degrade/(partially erase) the recording. But it would not attract a nail. The nail will have some internal electrical eddy currents induced, which in theory, heats the nail ever so slightly.

If you want to heat the nail a great deal, then you separate the conductors and wrap one of them around the nail many times, to multiply the effect by the number of wraps. You also multiply the current by some factor to again multiply the induction effect by that factor.
And now the heating effect is multiplied by both factors, and you have made an induction heater.

 

[Hobby_Man22]

Its a really good question, and the answer reveals a lot about what goes on in the magnetic field outside a wire that is carrying a current.

Since the current runs down to the socket end on the hot wire, and returns on the neutral, the magnetic fields around the wires are in opposite directions as you look down the wire. If the wires had no space between their centers (not possible), then then fields would cancel exactly and there would be no electromagnetic radiation detectable outside. The more they are separated, the more the fields won't cancel and the part that isn't cancelled gets radiated outward.

So why don't you feel the magnetic attraction like an electromagnet, even weakly?

Well electromagnets use DC current. They force magnetic north to point in a constant direction, just like a bar magnet. But an extension cable carries AC current, so the field that does radiate is changing direction 60 times a second. This acts like a de-magnetizer instead of like an electromagnet, because it is constantly changing the direction of North. If you were to lay an extension cable on top of a cassette tape long enough, the weak radiated field would degrade/(partially erase) the recording. But it would not attract a nail. The nail will have some internal electrical eddy currents induced, which in theory, heats the nail ever so slightly.

If you want to heat the nail a great deal, then you separate the conductors and wrap one of them around the nail many times, to multiply the effect by the number of wraps. You also multiply the current by some factor to again multiply the induction effect by that factor.
And now the heating effect is multiplied by both factors, and you have made an induction heater.

You mean she thinks all the wire is going to stick together like a big magnet? Lmao

 

[Chance]

You mean she thinks all the wire is going to stick together like a big magnet? Lmao

That's a question for the OP, Aaron_W.

 

[dcg9381]

wtf? You can't run a 12 gauge cord that far and carry 15 amps

You don't know how many 20A extension cords I've bought from Amazon (under 20') that I've sent back because there were not actually 12GA.

Course, many consumers buy the higher numbered gauge because that's better, right? Weren't we switching to metric about 40 years ago?