# Can you solve my small electrical mystery? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 17, 2014, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349 "2014-07-17T10:49:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349/21 "2014-07-17T21:24:27Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Hong Kong, huh? > > Are you using an adapter? HK uses round pins, don’t they? Does your iPod charge have rectangular pins? Is this addressed to me? What “pins”? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349/22 "2014-07-17T21:36:08Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Is this addressed to me? What “pins”? No, It seems that **md2000** has the same issue as you do. ---
**Author:** ![48Willys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/db5fbb/32.png) [@48Willys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/48Willys)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349/23 "2014-07-18T08:04:59Z")
> [@EdwinAmi](#): > > gremlins > > the answer is always gremlins No, no, This is electrical, not mechanical. Someone let the smoke out! Or at least some of it, hence the intermitant problem! You see he is in Hong Kong, and wasn’t Hong Kong a British colony at one time? It Hong Kongs electrical generation system made by Lucus? ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349/24 "2014-07-18T12:07:37Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > All things considered from this distance, I’d say it’s a bad cable that only connects when the charger is twisted a certain way on the wire This is the most likely scenario; there is an intermittent connection. When you plug it into the receptacle, the connection is open. When when you rotate the plug 180 degrees, the connection is made. > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Secondary, it could be a circuit flaw that genuinely only works with one ‘polarity’ of AC input, but like others I am having trouble imagining a circuit that would work that way As others have mentioned, if it’s a two-prong (ungrounded) plug, the polarity doesn’t mater, as it is impossible for the charger to “know” which prong is connected to hot and which is connected to neutral. This assumes, of course, that there’s not a leakage path to ground that is causing a weird problem. (Which would require two things: an internal fault in the power supply or load, and a path to earth ground.) Do some troubleshooting to determine the location of the intermittent connection. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349/25 "2014-07-18T12:19:19Z")
> [@california\_jobcase](#): > > Most of them didn’t live through the first semester due to people obsessively winding the cord around them after using them and internally snapping the wires right next to the strain relief thingy. Your last comment is right on the money: the fault is usually not in the wire. The fault is almost always where the wires terminate into something (soldered to a PCB, crimped to a connector, etc.). Flexing the cable puts torsional and longitudinal stresses on the terminations, and eventually causes an open or intermittent connection. A properly-designed strain relief is supposed to keep this from happening. But these things are _really_ cheap, and not much thought or money is put into the design of the strain relief. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349/26 "2014-07-18T15:37:29Z")
i’ve had plenty of molded strain reliefs be too stiff and cause the wire to break there. if i wind the cord on smaller wires then i leave no sharp bends anywhere and won’t use the wire to tie the loop with either. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349/27 "2014-07-18T16:51:05Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > Do some troubleshooting to determine the location of the intermittent connection. It’s a seven-year-old, aftermarket charger (not that I believe genuine Apple-may-blessings-and-peace-be-upon-its-holy-name accessories are better than the upper tier of aftermarket items anyway)… toss it and buy a new one. It’s five years past its expected useful lifetime anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-solve-my-small-electrical-mystery/693349.md?page=1)