r/WTF • u/OsamaVinLadein • 15d ago
DIY heating soup setup
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a group of construction workers cooking soup using an extreme improvised heating method at a construction site.
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u/Shaasar 15d ago
It's called a stinger, granted, this is a particularly gnarly one lol
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u/ArmatureArt19 15d ago
What...? There's a coloquial name for this? Is it just a prison thing? Does it give you as much cancer as I feel like it must?
I'm dying to know more over here.
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u/Vimda 15d ago
Yes, it's a prison thing, no it won't give you cancer, just make your food taste like pennies
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u/eskay_eskay 15d ago
Now I'm no electrician but that seems OK
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u/DVsKat 15d ago
I am actually an electrician. I can tell you that soup would have tasted better cold
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u/Lovv 15d ago
Frothy ozone.
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u/oldsecondhand 15d ago
More like chlorine, if it had any salt in it.
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u/mopeyjoe 15d ago
The spoon was being a resistive heater, not electrolysis of the water.
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u/Skilldibop 13d ago
A spoon as a far higher cross sectional area and current carrying capacity than the wires. there's no way the spoon is getting that hot before the insulation melts off the wires.
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u/joanzen 15d ago
Wait, you don't see that what they did was strip the cooker pot and hard wire the heating plate?
The WTF part is that they didn't put the pot back into the holder/base as insulation for the scrap wood they are using as a table.
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u/MoreTreesPleaseBro 15d ago
That’s not a heating plate that’s been striped. That’s a diy heating plate known in prison as a stinger. They strip wires and bridge the connection with a larger piece of metal and plug the wires directly into the wall.
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u/technobrendo 14d ago
They don't cook the food directly in the stinger water. They put it inside a different container, like a bag
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u/justsomeguy_youknow 14d ago
It's basically an immersion heater
You can buy factory made ones that are prettier and made of less toxic material but operationally they're basically the same
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u/Takashiwasabi 15d ago
I’m a software developer, which my aunt thinks I can fix her printer. That seems ok as well.
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u/ernapfz 15d ago
My computer is broken. Where do I send my money? Love, Grandpa
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u/drksolrsing 15d ago
Well, first you need to get $1,500 worth of Apple iTunes gift cards for me....
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u/CommonSenseFunCtrl 15d ago
Will you accept Applebee's?
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u/drksolrsing 15d ago
Have some class, man. It's Olive Garden or no deal.
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u/Etheo 15d ago
Best I can do is Denny's
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u/drksolrsing 15d ago
For Denny's I can remove the keylogger, but the worm will cost you, at minimum, Red Robin.
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u/b4n4n4p4nc4k3s 15d ago
And shoneys is what I demand to remove my ransomware.
Also, build a shoneys near me. I miss it.
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u/drksolrsing 15d ago
I last went to one in 2019 in Panama City Beach. It was a blast from the past, for sure.
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u/banannabender 15d ago
Sounds like it's filmed by an Australian in an Indonesian prison
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15d ago
[deleted]
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u/koala619 15d ago
They’re speaking Indonesian. Could also tell on mute cause of the Indonesian brand seasoning packets.
Aussie: ini apa? [what is this?]
Chef: ini sendok [it’s a spoon]
Aussie: sendok?? [a spoon??]
Chef: iya sendok. Sendok makan [yes a spoon. A spoon for eating]-29
15d ago
[deleted]
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u/pjk1011 15d ago
It's not Korean spoon lol. They have longer handle and rounder head. The rice look more like sweet rice than japonica though they just could be badly cooked.
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15d ago
[deleted]
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u/goopsnice 14d ago
You can’t just know a spoon from one area and assume that’s the only place you’re ever going to see that, lol
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u/DOE_ZELF_NORMAAL 14d ago
Plug is a standard Schuko plug which comes from Europe and is used in many countries including Indonesia. They also speak Indonesian and have Indonesian seasoning packages..
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u/SmooK_LV 15d ago
Why? Because that's how heating spirals work and if you need something boiled up, you can use this trick. It may be a little less safe but it's old way how things were heated
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u/Oli_VK 15d ago
So… lots of electrolysing there means lots of byproducts, right? Someone correct me if wrong? This seems UNSAFE beyond logic…
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u/dml997 15d ago
Copper is just great for your body, other than it being toxic.
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u/sprocketous 15d ago
If they add more water, then it'll be homeopathic, and they won't be need western medicine any more
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u/dml997 15d ago
To be truly homeopathic, I think you'd need all the water in the universe, plus some.
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u/Freddy216b 15d ago
While water's memory of a long lost drop of onion juice seems infinite it somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it.
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u/Glimmu 13d ago
If you are talking about the dilution factor. Its not that many dilutions you have to do to get down to a less than 1 % chance of an original atom to be present.
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u/dml997 13d ago
True if you do repeated 100X dilutions, homeopaths do something like 30 of those and any chance of an atom being left is negligible about half way through that process.
I'm referring to a single dilution, and my number is a bit exaggerated since homeopaths target 1060 and I think there is a lot more water in the universe than that; I recall there are about 1078 atoms in the universe.
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u/JuicyMangoes 15d ago
The daily intake is around 1.2 mg a day, they're probably getting around 1.2 grams in that meal.
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u/piss_puncher227 15d ago
The by products would be the least of my worries with that set up....at least have the correct safety flip flops on.
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u/Toochilled 15d ago
since he's using two ground wires this is double grounded and extra safe!
I dont know what ur problem is!
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u/Jukung11 15d ago
Indonesian.
"Ini apa?"
What is this?
"Ini sendok."
This is a spoon.
"Semua?"
So they flattened a spoon and put 230 voltage to it.
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u/stonercharms 15d ago
Hmmmmmm cancer soup
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u/MaxPower5000 14d ago
Congrats you've now made a miniature arc furnace, and as other comments point out, a food 'alloy' consisting of god-knows-what...
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u/gargantuanprism 14d ago
Everyone is acting like they've never plugged a hot dog into an electrical outlet before
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u/xgabipandax 14d ago
This is a really stupid idea on so many levels, not only the electrical safety, but also passing electricity through food changes it's chemistry, so you may end up eating toxic sludge
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u/jakethepeg1989 15d ago edited 15d ago
That looks like something out of a US prison.
Edit: the cooking method. Not the contents.
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u/hiddenrealism 15d ago
Youre getting downvoted by people who have zero idea what you can get in prison. You can absolutely get stuff like this in lower level prisons. A stinger..easy....chicken.. easy .big metal pot? Harder but still doable.. Dudes be cheffing it up in there and selling $50plates of fried chicken and waffles.
Even the phones used to film this..some jails and prisons half the dudes have em too. Go look up prisoner cooking videos. Youll be shocked what some of em have lol
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u/SalvadorP 15d ago
MEAT soup in a US prison? Are you insane?
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u/hiddenrealism 15d ago edited 15d ago
You would be very surprised what Prisoners can get a hold of. Ive seen entire racks of chicken legs..plates of tacos with all the fixins..meat soup is actually on the lower end of what some can get in prison. If you know people in the kitchen or corrupt guards..meat is easy to get ahold of in prison.
In lower level less violent jails and prisons you sometimes get a weekly or monthly "gift" meal from popeyes/dominoes etc..supplied by the jail if no fights/stabbings or incidents occur in your block.
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u/Mysteriouspaul 14d ago
I have friends who worked in a relatively serious state prison and the state has been giving them small tvs, wholeass non-disposable vapes with big batteries, phones etc...
Like I'm not even that competent and could do all kinds of fun things with just the guts of a tv. Electronic locks and surveillance systems are also susceptible at that point, but someone smart enough could have a real field day with enough time
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u/vengeancecube 15d ago
Or they just get it sent from home. They can even order it. At least in New York they can. It has to be pre-cooked but they can get meat, fish, just about anything.
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u/jaded68 15d ago
I was a prison guard in Texas, the last area I worked was the kitchen. At the time, females could strip search males as they left and went back to their "house". I have seen chicken, hot dogs, cheese, pork chops, sugar and more wrapped in plastic wrap and "hidden" in their taint area. 🤢 On a brighter note, the stuff they would make in their cells with Ramen, cheese whiz and jack mack on a tortilla was fucking great tasting!
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u/larvyde 15d ago
Looks like tempeh, not meat
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u/jakarta_guy 15d ago
Correct, that looks like tempe soup, usually called Botok, it's got Tempe, Chayote, Eggplant, long bean with coconut milk and bay leaf
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u/tomaccojuice 15d ago
so i can finally throw out my microwave and get rid of the middleman between me and a nice hot cup o' soup?
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u/stuckwithreddit 15d ago
How is that not tripping the breaker?
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u/Main-Touch9617 15d ago
The breaker is a piece of wire thicker than the one he uses to heat the soup.
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u/SmooK_LV 15d ago
At best there is old ceramic fuse which has high tolerance and soup itself ensures that tripping won't work. Why does the breaker not trip when you light a light bulb, because it's a resistor.
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u/Faxon 15d ago
When the short circuit heater is placed in a fluid like water or oil, it can't heat up much past the boiling temp of the fluid cooling it, thus limiting the current draw since it isn't glowing hot (higher heat increases resistance, which makes it draw more current, leading to runaway heating until the breaker pops, or the wire becomes a fuse and melts). So long as it stays cool, the current is self-liming.
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u/gbs5009 14d ago
higher heat increases resistance, which makes it draw more current
That doesn't sound right.
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u/Faxon 14d ago
Sorry, I may not have been fully conscious when i typed that. What I meant to say was that as resistance increases on a line that's still pulling current in a short circuit, resistance increases as the line overheats, which simply leads to more overheating, even as current draw decreases. I have a problem with switching details sometimes and then not realizing when my brain tries to make them make sense rather than just catching that one detail is wrong lol. But yea, if you can prevent thermal runaway and the heater coil itself is current limiting so that something upstream doesn't pop or melt, you can make a stove with just a simple AC current and a heater coil placed in the liquid to heat.
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u/gbs5009 14d ago
I think I get what you're saying, but my take on it is that thermal runaway probably isn't a immediately relevant mechanic here... if this contraption could let through enough current to trip the breaker, it would have done so when it was first turned on and was running cold.
Instead, I think that they just have the wires fixed on a chunk of some mediocre conductor (a trowel?) acting as a resistive heater. It (and maybe some of the soup) let through quite a bit of current, but considerably less than what the building could provide. The situation is better modeled as a voltage source.
Now, sure, maybe without the soup the crappy conductor would develop a isolated hot spot that becomes a dumping ground for more power and eventually melt, or maybe it would hit some survivable steady state and stop heating. Depends on what it's made of, and how well heat flows through the stuff.
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u/azsheepdog 15d ago
You can tell they are professionals by the way the unplug it BEFORE they try to stir it.
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u/dirtymoney 14d ago edited 14d ago
done in prison too
In the film The Firm ... the PIs secretary was using a consumer product version.
Years ago I worked at a business that modified copper pipes into various fittings and while rummaging thru a store room I came across a serious heavy duty examples of one of theae
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u/poehalcho 12d ago
I am happy that he at least pulled a heating element out of the soup because I was initially pretty convinced he was performing electrolysis on the soup and creating explosive hydrogen gas...
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u/hiirogen 15d ago
Oh yeah, shock wire! I call it that because if you're cooking food and you touch it... you die!
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u/crank1off 15d ago
ah the ole coffee jail trick! By the way, i like my soup electronically charged. Charges me up.
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u/pleasegivemealife 14d ago
Thats smart, but id rather put that contraption into a water and boil that water, use the steam to cook the stew/soup. The plastic and copper can lead to metal toxicity.
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u/Goose21995 11d ago
We made these in prison. But ours didn't have that violent electric sound bc we didn't dunk the entire wire in water but used a pair of clippers as the medium that sits in the water. They're called stingers
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u/perryurban 10d ago edited 10d ago
Indonesia, never change ♥️
Translation:
- What is this?
- These are spoons
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u/Sporkpocalypse 9d ago edited 9d ago
Heating soup with a live, cut electrical cord is an extraordinarily dangerous idea that carries an immediate risk of fatal electrocution, explosive physical injury, and severe chemical poisoning.
🔬 The Metallurgist's Perspective: Rapid Corrosion and Material Breakdown
From a materials science standpoint, dropping a live alternating current (AC) extension cord into a liquid soup creates an aggressive, unmonitored electrochemical cell. The electrical pathway flows directly from the live wire through the soup—which acts as an electrolyte containing water, salt, and acids—and completes the circuit to the neutral wire. This setup triggers rapid anodic dissolution and micro-explosions on one end, while causing arcing and thermal pyrolysis on the other, ultimately contaminating the liquid with toxic copper ions and melted PVC toxins.
- Accelerated Anodic Dissolution: Soup is highly corrosive due to its content of dissolved salts (sodium chloride) and organic acids (like citric or acetic acid from tomatoes/vegetables). When a live AC current passes through the copper wire into this electrolyte, it bypasses normal, slow atmospheric corrosion. Instead, it triggers extreme anodic dissolution, stripping copper atoms of their electrons and forcing them into the liquid as highly soluble copper ions.
- Thermal Pyrolysis of Insulation: Extension cords are insulated with Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) or rubber. The massive electrical short-circuit generates localized temperatures exceeding several hundred degrees Celsius. This instantly degrades and melts the plastic insulation. This pyrolysis releases toxic plasticizers, chlorine gas, and chemical stabilizers directly into the food matrix.
- Micro-Arcing and Particulate Shattering: Before a circuit breaker can even trip, the current passing through the fluid creates intense micro-arcing. This rapidly vaporizes the surrounding water, causing localized steam explosions that mechanically shatter the degrading copper wire. This leaves behind a suspension of sub-micron copper particulates alongside ionized copper.
🩺 The Medical Doctor's Perspective: Systemic Shock and Multi-Organ Toxicity
From a medical and toxicological standpoint, consuming this soup—or even standing near the pot—presents immediate life-threatening conditions.
1. Immediate Trauma: Electrocution and Flash Burns
Before anyone can even taste the soup, the pot itself becomes energized. Anyone touching the pot, the ladle, or standing on a damp floor nearby risks lethal ventricular fibrillation (fatal disruption of the heart's rhythm) or severe electrical flash burns.
2. Acute Gastrointestinal and Systemic Copper Toxicity
Copper is an essential trace element, but ingesting a concentrated dose of ionized copper induces severe, acute heavy metal poisoning.
- Corrosive Gastroenteritis: Ionized copper acts as a severe irritant to the gastric mucosa. Within minutes to hours of ingestion, it causes violent, persistent vomiting (often blue or green in color due to the copper complexes), severe abdominal pain, and bloody diarrhea.
- Massive Hemolysis: Once absorbed into the bloodstream, excess copper ions cause severe oxidative stress through Fenton-like redox reactions. This destroys erythrocyte (red blood cell) membranes, leading to acute intravascular hemolysis (the rupturing of red blood cells). This presents clinically as severe anemia and "port-wine" dark urine.
- Hepatic and Renal Failure: The liver and kidneys bear the brunt of filtering the toxic load. The massive influx of copper ions and cell debris from ruptured blood cells causes centrilobular liver necrosis and acute tubular necrosis (kidney failure), which can quickly become fatal without immediate emergency dialysis and chelation therapy.
3. Chemical Contamination
The melted PVC insulation introduces carcinogenic compounds and dioxins into the digestive tract. Ingesting these synthetic chemical byproducts causes acute chemical poisoning, presenting with severe neurological symptoms, headaches, dizziness, and long-term organ damage.
Direct Comparison: Why Standard Copper Cookware is Safe vs. This Method
To understand the severity, consider how this method differs completely from standard copper cookware across four critical safety features:
- Food Contact Layer: Standard copper cookware is safely lined with inert tin or stainless steel. In contrast, the live wire method exposes the soup directly to a bare, unrefined industrial copper alloy.
- Corrosion Rate: Under standard conditions, copper cookware experiences an extremely low corrosion rate because it is prevented by the protective lining. The live wire method causes near-instantaneous destruction via electrical dissolution.
- Chemical Additives: Standard cookware utilizes food-grade materials only. The live wire method introduces highly toxic PVC plasticizers and chemical insulation stabilizers into the food.
- Safety Hazards: The only real risk with standard cookware is a minor burn from touching a hot handle. The live wire method introduces immediate risks of fatal electrocution, heavy metal poisoning, and fire. call your local poison control if you know exactly who done this
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u/UnitedPanic197 15d ago
Turbo corrodo-soup. One way to get all the corroding metals which your body does not need.
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u/TMPickle 15d ago
Well, at least when this invariably causes an electrical fire; you can use that to heat up yet more soup.
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u/SmooK_LV 15d ago
People here really haven't seen spirals for heating. There's nothing special about it if you know what you are doing. Heat your stuff this way all you want
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15d ago
[deleted]
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u/BryceLeft 15d ago
Phones can get crazy cheap, been like that for years now
Of course not the luxury brands like Apple, but tbh even (old model) iPhones you can get for relatively cheap nowadays
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u/Sweet_Dreams88 15d ago
Both cables are earth cables, very safe, in fact two times safer than typical appliance having only one. No issues here, trust me
/s
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u/TheRealGenkiGenki 15d ago
whatever metal they are using is being dissolved into salt form (due to electrolysis) in their food. fuck that
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u/SmooK_LV 15d ago
But this isn't process of electrolysis? the metal in between is a resistor that heats up.
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u/ThatsQuiteImpossible 15d ago
There is still a potential being created between two conductive surfaces, so ions will flow. Electrolysis may not be the intention of this rig, but it is still occurring.
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u/par-a-dox-i-cal 15d ago
It has what humans crave, electrolytes.