Question

Explain what is short circuiting and overloading in an electrical supply.

Answer 1

Hint:Short circuiting and overloading, both of them lead to the heating of wire in the electrical supply. The difference between them is that one of the heating processes is produced because of the high amount of current flowing through the circuit, while in the other one; heating is produced due to more power produced.

Complete answer:
Short circuiting: It occurs sometimes that the live and neutral wires come in contact with each other, and this result is called short circuiting. In such instances, the resistance of a circuit decreases to an extremely small value. The decreasing of resistance results into the increase in the current. The wires get heated due to this increased current. The heat produced may cause fire in the building.

Overloading: Every electrical supply has a certain capacity to bear a maximum load of the system; it means that the power that can be supplied has a limit. There are some instances when the numbers of appliances which are switched on at the same time have more power than the capacity of the line. This incident is called overloading. In such circumstances, the wires of the supply get heated due to extremely large current flowing through them and the circuit may catch fire. To avoid this fire, an electric fuse is used in the circuit.

Note: The heating in short circuiting is due to the current and the heat is produced by the following formula \[H = {I^2}R\] where I is the current in the electrical circuit and R is the resistance. In overloading, heating is produced due to the formula \[H = \dfrac{{{V^2}}}{R}\] where V is the voltage obtained from the batter and R is the resistance.