Thursday, January 17, 2013

A USB popcorn maker???


I don't believe a USB socket can transfer enough power to do this, but it's still funny!








Peter

7 comments:

The Great and Powerful Oz said...

Good fake. There's no way to get enough power from a USB connection to do that.

USB is 5 volts, you're a former computer guy, you figure out how much current would be needed and how big the wires would have to be...

Old NFO said...

"Somebody" was bored... :-)

Toejam said...

A U.S. College student in action!

That's how Bill Gates got started.

Scott said...

Those were 150watt heat bulbs? That'd be drawing 30 amps each, if I remember my electrical circuit theory correctly.

According to the USB battery charging specs, max draw through a USB port is 5 amps. 25 watts is a pretty decent heat output, though. Look at the Easy-bake ovens!

The Great and Powerful Oz said...

Scott -

The USB 2 specs allow for 500 mA, or .5 Amps. Fast chargers for devices that use USB may provide more (my iPhone and Clear hotspot chargers do), but computers are very limited in the current they provide to about 2.5 watts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

Scott said...

Seems I misread the USB Battery Charger specs (http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/BCv1.2_070312.zip ). Max draw is between 1.5 and 1.8 amps at 5vdc, for 7.5-9watts.

There's no way that 9W is enough to pop popcorn. I would've believed 25w.

Rey B said...

Not to mention that if the can got hot enough to pop the corn it would have been too hot to pick up with bare hands.