Electronic and
electrical devices have become truly imperative for most when we travel. Moreover,
there is nothing worse than running out of battery on your mobile phone while
you try to figure out how to get to the hotel or upload photos of your vacation
on Instagram or Facebook. Whether it is to charge your camera or connect your
hair straightener, you have to know if they are compatible with the voltage (also
known as current intensity) and the type of outlet in the country or region you
are traveling to.
Most people
who have laptops do not know which power
adapters are they using with their laptops. However, believe it or not, it
is a part of the laptop that has its own importance, and there are always times when we
overlook its importance.
More and more
consumers acquire the second adapter as
an alternative to having to carry with them each day the heavy adapter that comes in the box. For
example, why not have one at home and another at the office, and save the carry
from side to side? Alternatively, why
not have a smaller and lighter adapter for travel and vacation?
However,
here arises for the laymen a torrent of doubts among so many
acronyms, units of measurement and what is more complicated, and a lack of
homogenization worldwide. However,
the only thing clear is that there is a big difference between cheap adapters
and those of good quality, and that is
something that we will try to explain in more detail below. It is in these
details where you can see that often the cheap is expensive, or "when your
team of 2,000 euros goes to waste because you spent six in an all-to-one
hundred with no guarantees."
The
electric line
Let's think about
the route that the energy has to make until it reaches our team, both to work
and to be recharged. The reason of the broad use of the alternating
current is determined by its ease of
transformation, a quality lacking in the direct current.
In the case of
direct current the voltage rise is achieved by connecting dynamos in series,
which is not very practical; On the contrary, in alternating current, there is a device: the transformer,
which allows raising the voltage in a
much more efficient way.
Thus, when
transported from the generation plants, we can, use
a transformer, raise the voltage to high
values (high voltage), decreasing in equal proportion the current intensity. With
this, the same energy can be distributed over long distances with low current currents and, therefore, with low losses. Once at the point of
consumption or in its vicinity, the voltage can be reduced again for industrial
or domestic use comfortably and safely.
The
outlet
The first, in the
front. Let's start with the plug,
the "male" part of the electrical connection; it is usually located on the cable end attached to
the equipment it serves, and its main
function is to establish a secure electrical connection with the power outlet.
There are plugs of different types and shapes that vary according to the needs and standards of each
product or country, so when traveling is convenient to take the precaution of
knowing the type that is used and make
adapters.
The socket is the
standard wall outlet, usually placed on the wall, either surface-mounted
(top-of-the-way, older) or wall-mounted in a box (wall socket or wall outlet).
Both the male plugs
and the female plugs have been standardized to favor the safety assurance and
replacement capacity of the devices. However, this standardization has not
often exceeded national boundaries, with more than a dozen systems based on
geographical area, although only four or five types can be considered as truly dominant.
In Europe, for example, ISO and UNE standards include
a set of regulations for all members of the Union. However, there are
differences of approach, and even the UK and Commonwealth
countries continue to have different types of plugs than
the rest of Europe. There are also problems of standardization in this
regard in some Eastern countries, although they are minor.
All EU countries
(except Cyprus, Ireland, Malta and the United
Kingdom) use two-pin plugs (metal parts) with three plugs, with the third contact on the top or
bottom of the plugs. The two plugs
connect one phase and the neutral, and the third the ground wire that connects
all the metal parts of the electrical appliances with grounding to avoid
possible discharges to the user.
Two
types of plugs are mainly produced on the continent: 'type C,' with a thin pin
and without an earthing, and the 'SE type' (also known as 'Schuko' in Germany) with two lugs which
may be thin or Grease and side grounding by contact and top by a reception. However, in Italy,
they are three rounded parallel pins, and in Switzerland in a triangle; In Brazil, they are usually two
flat pins, while in Israel and Australia
they are three, but in a tripod.
All this makes that
only the experience and the need to make valued to count on an ample arsenal of
interchangeable connectors; although the truth is that this will only be appreciated by those who travel a lot around
the globe, in which case they will be more than ready. However, for the occasional or unsuspecting
traveler, you can always count on that in many hotels they have Custom Power Adapters that lend to their guests.
The
units of measurement
To
get a little understanding of all this, it is better to take the manual of BUP physics and
go to the pages of amps and volts to review some concepts of electrical
metrology: voltage (or voltage), current (or amperage), Resistance, impedance,
reactance, frequency, etc.
Well, nowadays it is
easier, we connect to the Wikipedia and
ready; We are going to focus only on the symbols that usually appear in an
ordinary plug, are basic but often
unknown terms as to their meaning:
Volt
It is the unit
derived from electric potential and electromotive force; a volt is a potential difference in a conductor when a current
of an ampere uses a watt or watt of power. This value is mainly
used to determine the capacity of the equipment’s and power cables to an electric charge, in cables the value of the
intensity of the current can suffice. If the current is constant over
time, the current is said to be continuous (DC); otherwise, it is called
alternating (AC). Its symbol is V. It was
so named in honor of the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta.
Amp
It
is the unit of current of electric current; Is part of the basic units in
the International System of Units (such as the meter, the second and the
kilogram), so it is defined without reference to the amount of electric charge
(the unit of charge, the coulomb, would be the amount of charge Displaced by a
current of one ampere in the time of one second). The instrument
used to measure the intensity of the electric current is the galvanometer
which, calibrated in amperes, is called an ammeter. Its symbol is A. It was named in honor of the French physicist
André-Marie Ampère.
Ohm
It is the unit of
electrical resistance that exists between two points of a conductor; a device with a one-ohm resistance if a voltage of one
volt produces a current of one ampere. The impedance is a complex
amount of generalization of that resistance (it is complex because the real
part is the resistance while an estimated part is the reactance). Its
symbol is Ω. It was named in honor
of the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm.
Heredad
It is the frequency
unit of the electromagnetic waves generated by the passage of electric current
(replacing in 1970 the term cycle per second). A hertz represents a cycle
(repetition of an event) for every second
and is applied to measure the repeated times per
second. His symbol is Hz. He was
named in honor of the German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.
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