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Comment by p_l | Hacker News Reader

While sibling comments mentioned a bit about differences in building approach with heavy use of brick and concrete in Europe, at times it reaches into cultural incomprehension.

When US action movies started to show up more in Poland, many people joked how american movies exaggerate things by using cheap plywood scene sets for houses. Finding out that american homes are actually built like that was a bit of a shock to many.

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To be fair, a little 4.9 earthquake counts as one of the biggest ever recorded in Poland.

And if you know anything about electrical wiring, do not look up how they do it in those plywood houses in US, any European building inspector would have a heart attack :)

I get shivers just from the standard outlets in USA...

What's wrong with our outlets? We've got less voltage, and a ground plug that makes contact first. When the outlet is in a room with water, or outdoors, it goes through a ground fault interrupter to keep people from being electrocuted.

We reserve 220 volt outlets and higher voltages (3 phase 480, etc) for the larger loads, and those plugs are huge, and not something found in a typical home.

While this is all true, less voltage comes with a price and that is more current.

2 times less voltage === 4 times more heating for the same resistance (heating is calculated from R times I^2).

This means that short circuits, wiring problems are potentially much dangerous.

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