I’m also disappointed that Nick has not taken previous comments on this issue as constructive criticism. Instead, he points out that at least he wrote something; then challenges us to write our own, better tutorial, if we don’t like his. In essence, he is telling us to “put up or shut up”.

But we don’t really need another fuse tutorial. There are plenty of good ones out there already, ranging from beginner to advanced. While more are still welcome, writing a misleading tutorial is worse than writing nothing at all.

Stamping out false information is best done immediately and at the source, before it gets ingrained; or worse, repeated to others. Thus we’ve done the best we can do, by commenting here.

Of course, it would be better if Nick were to simply correct the article. So on behalf of myself and the rest of the commenters (since all have taken issue with this phrase, without exception), I hereby challenge Nick to do so.

And isn’t there is some number of electrons, that when exceeded by one, will cause the metal in the fuse to undergo a phase state transformation? I thought the molecular lattice can accommodate some number of electrons, and when that value is exceed, I’m pretty sure a plasma briefly forms and things push apart. It is different than something like nichrome wire, that gets progressively hotter as the electron flow increases. The The 3A fuse rating, as described as a rate of electron flow in the article, only implies five significant figures of accuracy, not 20. So within that value, it is perfectly reasonable that there is some exact value, that when exceeded by one, will blow a fuse.

I generally don’t consider Make to be on par with Yahoo Answers, but this post most certainly is.

“I take issue with the “one electron more” phrase because the post purports to describe fuses to people who presumably don’t understand how they work. As such they are unable to differentiate between the facts and “poetic license”, and thus the hyperbole does these people a disservice”

I felt like it was presented as a nifty science fact instead of an exaggeration, which I fear is misleading. Fuses work much fuzzier than that.

Other than that, great article. The .gif of the fuse blowing is excellent!

Fuses blow due to heat, not “one extra electron.” There are fast blow fuses and slow blow fuses, and even fast blow fuses will more than likely never blow with just “one extra electron” over their rated current. Every type of fuse should have a spec sheet along with it indicating the time it takes to blow at various current levels, good datasheets will also have derating information based on ambient temperatures.

While I have no doubt the fuse in the animated GIF blew so suddenly, somehow I doubt it was being fed with just “one extra electron.” More than likely, it was a straight short from a battery producing more than enough current to make it blow immediately.

For example, that 3A fuse won’t blow at all at exactly 3A, at 3.3A it may still never blow, at 4A it may take as much ten minutes before it blows (or as little as .750 seconds, Littelfuse’s datasheet gives a very wide range for such little overcurrent).

Look over this datasheet, and read a lot more about fuses: http://www.littelfuse.com/data/en/Data_Sheets/Littelfuse_BladeFuse_ATO32V.pdf

Frankly, I’m disappointed. I expect a MUCH higher quality of reporting out of Make.

My problem is with the use of such extreme hyperbole that is indistinguishable from fact by people who don’t know the topic, in the middle of a piece that’s clearly targeted at such people. I expect that from a newspaper or TV new show, I was hoping not to see it on MAKE.