I used to teach an introduction to electronics course at the local community college, and one of the labs was to build a simple DC power supply, with a transformer, 4 diodes and a capacitor.
No matter how clearly or loudly I explained the positive-negative terminals of the capacitor and what would happen if it was put in the circuit the wrong way, there was always one group that did it anyway, with the ensuing BANG scaring the crap out of everyone.
Almost all of the screw-ups were not intentional, but they sure had the class awake! And no groups that hadn't got to that point ever then put the cap in backwards. Maybe I should have just sacrificed a cap at the beginning.
Fortunately no one ever suffered any ill-effects, though the guts of the capacitors were ejected at high velocities, all over the place.
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Exploding capacitors
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- Problem with computer
- But before you do any of this stuff, CHECK THE SWITCH!
- I had a similar problem 4-5 years ago. It was the power supply (fan) (n/t)
- What motherboard do you have? (n/t)
- Check RAM
- Power supply? Or internal backup battery.