OK sparkies, riddle me this.

Why the hell is yellow the positive on thermocouple wire? Not red.

I'm working on a methane flare temperature logger using a Stride TC input device and having Ignition read it and generate a temperature report for the PCA.

 

@pickled egg to the white courtesy phone please.

 

I was curious, so IGTFY

https://www.hgsind.com/videos/how-identify-thermocouple-wire-color#:~:text=States and Canada.-,In ANSI color coding, the red wire of a thermocouple,200 to 1,250 degrees Celsius.

So the color identifies the temperature range, but why that couldn't have been the
negative instead of the positive I doubt anyone knows at this point.

 

_

 

Thats dumb. It reminds me of the time when I was in Switzerland in a diesel rental car. Had to fill it up on returning it. So I stopped at a gas station. Grabbed the green colored gas nozzle like I do when I fill up my diesel truck at home. Filled the tank then got about 50 ft before car died. Black nozzle is diesel in Europe, green is unleaded. WE ALWAYS HAVE TO BE FUCKIN DIFFERENT!

 

Standards are great - there are so many to choose from.

Wire color coding is one area with a complete multitude of "standards", often unique to a manufacturer and category of cable. You pretty much have to look them up for any multi-conductor or multi-pair cable. I'm not at all surprised that there is a special wire color code for thermocouples.

 

NERDS

 

Yeah, black is negative much of the time in 12v, but hot in 120v. And bicycle front brakes are on the left. Sometimes you gotta stop and think, "okay where am I?" And then panic.

 

Certain universal 220v motors have a white wire for one of the two hot leads. Who’s idea is that?

 

We had a tech that mainly worked on instrumentation and it also bugged him that thermocouple wire colour convention (there's also some that is white & green).
Anyway, his trick to remember was "If it's red, it means it's negative for sex...."
It takes all kinds.

 

What a coward

 

Christ Wolfe! Do it right or don't do it at all

 

Meh, to each is own.

Mindewe, it could have been worse.

Brown could have been positive...

 

Brown is 277v.

Or 12+ for trailer parking lighting.

 

I aint sticking nuttin in 277

 

My bicycle now has the front brake on the right where it belongs.

 

In my 4 plus decades of being a Journeyman Electrician, I've seen almost every color wire ever devised by man, represent almost every possible voltage/polarity know to man, and what I learned at a pretty early stage of that career......the conductor inside the insulating jacket doesn't give a rat's ass what is on the outside of it as far as colors go.

 

Go under the dash of your car and cut ANY yellow wire by the steering column. I DARE YOU!!!

 

Well, black may be negative for 12V cars, but not for "race" cars. LOL. I was volunteering way back, helping work on a formula V racecar, and was connecting up the black battery cable to the negative battery post. All the magic smoke started leaving the wiring. I got yelled at, for doing what I did. "the black wire doesn't go to the negative terminal, this is a race car!"

I stopped helping after that. Not worth it.

 

I have done the same.