Mildly Infuriating

As much as I like the metric system, temperature in the world is the one place where I prefer Fahrenheit. Having to care about decimal points on a thermostat just seems like trying too hard. "Oh honey, could you turn the thermostat down to 21.1C?"

You know that 100 is hot as balls. You know 0 is cold AF. 0C is 32F. That's not really that cold, I'm shoveling snow in a t-shirt. 0F is really that cold. It is almost more akin to a percent of comfort scale than a measurement of temperature.

It is an interesting thought experiment though, as anyone using a given measurement scale gets used to it over time. I've been doing dual for a while to better intuit fuzzy translations in my head without having to run a formula every time.

Just an opinion of course, and not trying to have some flagrant discussion. I'd gladly switch to Celsius if we ever finally left Freedom Units. Thus far, the only places you see it in the US is in science, medical, and pop companies selling 16.9fl oz (just shy of 500ml) beverages instead of 20, so they can milk their bubble sugar water for all the profits.

It's a large capacitor. They are used in those big outdoor AC units to kick start the ~~fan~~ compressor. Being outdoors and subject to large temperature changes and vibrations for years they inevitably fail.

https://static.homeguide.com/assets/images/content/homeguide-technician-replacing-ac-capacitor.jpg

I'm assuming that it's some sort of component from the air conditioner, but damned if I know what it is. Looks like power plugs on it, and someone else mentioned "caps", so maybe a capacitor, though I wasn't aware that there was some kind of plug standard for large removable capacitors.

kagis

Yeah, this capacitor looks similar.

EDIT: Apparently air conditioners can use large capacitors:

https://www.amazon.com/Capacitor-Conditioner-Multi-Purpose-Capacitor-5-Warranty/dp/B092ZQ3Y3N

Capacitor for Air Conditioner 5 uf MFD 370 or 440 Volt VAC, Multi-Purpose Round Capacitor for AC Motor Run or Fan Motor Start or Condenser Straight

EDIT2: Oh, I bet I know what it's for, given the "Fan Motor Start" and what I assume is a misspelled "Condenser Start" text on the Amazon listing. Some hardware will draw a lot of juice when starting up. Laser printers are prone to this, for example. The references above are to mechanical things, moving components, and maybe one need extra power to overcome static friction, to get the parts in motion initially; once moving, they face (lesser) kinetic friction. One option is to just draw a ton of power from the line, but then that increases the peak power demands of a device. Another option, gentler on whatever circuit or external power source is providing the power, is to charge a capacitor for a bit and that'll let you create a big surge of available power for a moment without having to have higher peak demands on the external power source. Adds to device cost, but limits its peak draw.

Don't buy an electrolytic capacitor as back up and store then over a long time. They will degrade and will be bad when you finally need them.

MKP/MKT capacitors are an exception since they don't degrade the same.

Yeah, I bought one to make sure that was the only problem. It just came back up so, now I'll pull the furnace apart and find what size it uses for the blower keep them both on hand.

Motor capacitor for an A/C compressor. A $15 part that a service company is going to charge $400 for a guy missing most of his teeth to replace in 2 minutes.