No
The other three people in the room did not answer at once. Each was exhausted in their own way, as though they had just finished a battle.
Hazel recovered first. She walked to the sink and washed her hands with soap.
"One of the small exhaust fans in the basement broke," the old woman explained. "The fan wouldn't turn and kept humming. When I first checked it, I found a relay here had tripped, so I thought the load was too high. But after I cleaned off the dust and restarted it, I found it wasn't just an overload..."
The old woman carefully scrubbed the black grime from beneath her nails, tightened the faucet, and casually wiped the remaining water from her hands onto her clothes.
"Actually, a capacitor up top had failed, so only the main winding of the motor was powered. A single-phase motor generally needs two forces offset by half a beat before it can start turning. The capacitor delays the current to the auxiliary winding a little, so the two forces act at different times, allowing the fan to produce a 'rotating' effect."
As Hazel spoke, she packed up her toolbox. It was a large hard red plastic case, worn pale pink in many places. Unlike the neat, orderly toolbox Chloe had imagined, Hazel's was a complete mess. Pliers and screwdrivers of various sizes were piled together, and every tool had blackish-brown grease stains somewhere on its handle or metal parts.
"Once the capacitor fails, the auxiliary winding syncs up with the main winding. The motor doesn't turn but draws a huge current, so of course the thermal relay trips." Hazel could not help smiling as she said this, as though she had just told a funny joke.
Chloe understood none of it. Not wanting