Fire Safety in the Lab

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by charlie1218

As you heat up any metal with intense heat, especially at a gauge that small, you cause it to rapidly expand, and contract, which causes finite cracks. This causes the wire to become brittle and greatly weakened, so that when the electric current passes through, its heat, which a normal wire can stand, is now too great and will cause a short in your wiring, which causes high heat. This heat will in turn compromise your remaining insulation and further damage the conductor. Essentially a giant Cluster*^%&

Wouldn't soldering do that too?
EDIT: Wait a minute, shouldn't a wire act as kinda like a short anyway since it is supposed to have as low a resistance as possible and a short is a low resistance path? A short inside a single conductor wire would simply imply that the electricity has found a lower resistance path through the wire, which would then imply that rapidly heating and cooling the wire would in fact improve its electrical performance?