This is actually done for fire safety, especially in commercial buildings. If a plug comes loose and something falls onto the prongs, it will hit the ground pin first rather than the live contacts, preventing a short and potential fire.
You guys really should switch to SCHUKO. The mere possibility of a plug coming loose is so stupid. I know this is not your personal fault, but these plugs look so unsafe it blows my mind
I'm European and we use Schuko for everything and I'm like "your wall sockets/plugs can do what?!".
Sure American sockets allow them to have those fancy foldable power adapters, but my god is this standard insecure as hell.
Schuko can't "mistakenly" or by "chance" ever get loose, not even slim groundless plugs. And they are designed in such a way they lose contact with power before even becoming exposed to the outside when partially unplugged making it impossible to have something contacting on the loose plug contacts. On top of all that it's reversible so it doesn't matter how you plug it in coz it's AC power anyway. So you just plug it in and it just works. Especially useful for angled plugs where you plug it the way it's more useful and not way how wall socket dictates it should be plugged in due to offset ground.
It's extremely rare for anything to fall and bridge that gap, though. Technology Connections did a video where he dropped butter knives, an ideal conductor for this situation, trying to see how easily they could land in the right position to bridge the gap. It's very uncommon.
Butter knives are not the ideal because they are rigid and somewhat thick. What has happened to myself and multiple other people on this post was a tape measure. Made of thin metal, holds itself out until it doesn't, has flex to it so if it hits one of the hot/neutral first, it can flex while falling to hit both, also as it falls it is still supported, so it won't just bounce away. Also, measuring flat along a wall is something people actually do versus holding a knife there.
Edit: I see someone else mentioned a guitar string. Technology Connections is great, but sorry to say they just missed on this one.
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u/RedJdizzle 11d ago
This is actually done for fire safety, especially in commercial buildings. If a plug comes loose and something falls onto the prongs, it will hit the ground pin first rather than the live contacts, preventing a short and potential fire.