Brain Teaser Challenge - November

by Butch Shadwell

I was just watching one of those reality shows on TV. This one had a dozen American city girls trying to win the heart of an Australian fellow from the outback. It was very amusing. These girls came from all sorts of backgrounds and educational experience.
Some of the young debs were upset that they could not plug in there hair dryers while living in the bush. One even had to redo her own nails … a first for her. As luck would have it, one girl had been in the Girl Scouts and one of her merit badges was in electricity. The producers of the TV show found a car battery and a power inverter to aid with the hair blowing emergency. This inverter produced a 60 Hz sine wave at 120 vrms, 15A max. The instructions said that it will not handle loads with a PF less than 0.9. If the hair dryer says that it draws 1000W or 1200 VA, will the inverter carry the load? For extra credit what is the angle between the current and voltage waveforms on this appliance? Our Girl Scout got it right.
Reply to Butch Shadwell at b.shadwell@ieee.org (email)
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The names of correct respondents may be mentioned in the solution column.