this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
460 points (97.7% liked)

xkcd

11756 readers
14 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
460
xkcd #3106: Farads (imgs.xkcd.com)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

xkcd #3106: Farads

Title text:

'This HAZMAT container contains radioactive material with activity of one becquerel.' 'So, like, a single banana slice?'

Transcript:

[Cueball holds a stick while talking with Megan and White Hat.]
Cueball: This stick is one meter long.
Megan: Cool.
White Hat: That's a nice stick.

[Cueball holds a smallish rock.]
Cueball: This rock weighs one pound.
Megan: I'd believe it.
White Hat: Looks like a normal rock.

[Cueball holds a small battery.]
Cueball: This battery is one volt.
Megan: Seems fine.
White Hat: Might need a recharge.

[Cueball holds a capacitor while Megan and White Hat panic.]
Cueball: This capacitor is one farad.
Megan: Aaaaa! Be careful!!
White Hat: Put it down!!

Source: https://xkcd.com/3106/

explainxkcd for #3106

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 days ago (21 children)

Wait so this is like one mistake away from turning that stickman into a fried stickman?

[–] ricecake 37 points 5 days ago (20 children)

Depends on the voltage it's charged with, but household current would give it more energy than a shotgun has.

Realistically one would not do that unless you were dealing with something industrial. You would use them otherwise for things like dampening lower voltage systems that need a lot of current.

Closer to the danger level of someone holding two exposed wires plugged into the wall.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (16 children)

Household current pumped through a full bridge rectifier, that is.

Capacitors don't seem to do very much with AC Other than attenuate it a bit

[–] ricecake 8 points 4 days ago

Technically correct. The best kind of correct. :)

I basically solved for shotgun, confirmed in was in the ~100V range and disregarded every other consideration for actually doing it.
I'm pretty sure most hand sized capacitors would just pop if you actually tried to put that much in them.

load more comments (15 replies)
load more comments (18 replies)
load more comments (18 replies)