In more seriousness, when you first Google "daisy chaining power strips", the very first thing that comes up is the
Office of Compliance Guidelines, which talk a lot about the OSHA Regulations.
If you read carefully, they do agree that the main problem is drawing too much current:
Quote:
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However, interconnecting these devices is a violation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations and the National Electrical Code because doing so can cause them to become overloaded, leading to their failure and a possible fire.
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But the reason this is such an issue is because people don't sit down and figure out how much load they are putting on the circuit, where their power is coming from, etc. So people do stupid things like Daisy chaining power strips and using 16/18 ports and attempt to draw way more than the allotted 15 or 20 Amps for that circuit.
How many times have you walked into a pit to see giant powered displays, 8 battery chargers plugged in, someone running a corded power tool, two kids working off of laptops someone running a compressor off of AC and 5 cell phones plugged in? Did anyone in the pit sit down and figure out the power draw? Probably not. Are they really drawing more than is allotted? Maybe not... But the point is no one figured it out.
And when people do dumb things, safety inspectors make rules in order to prevent the dumb things. It may not be exactly the right rule, but its a rule based on the majority of people. Yes FIRST people are smart (in general). But I've not been to a single competition where I heard anyone trying to figure out how much power they were drawing from the pit outlets (except when they blew the breaker!). So safety advisors make rules to attempt to help prevent issues before they happen. An electrical fire is NOT something we want to have to deal with. Is this rule exactly right? No. But can I see why they made it? Yes.
Teams do stupid things with power because it is easy. I've seen a team running battery chargers from an AC-DC converter that was plugged into their cart power strip, which was plugged into a DC-AC converter being run off of some sort of Marine battery. REALLY? Too many teams/people don't know the subtleties of AC power draw, thus OSHA makes rules to prevent the majority of them from doing stupid things. Thus... this "safety quiz"
*offsoapbox*