system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Today in a safety training I got told that arc flashes are as hot as the sun. Is this true?
gpt
The temperature of the Sun's surface is 5800K. The temperature of electrical arcs, including arc flashes, can get up to 20000K or more. Temperature alone doesn't tell you how dangerous it is without knowing the total energy of the discharge, but the high temperature means it will cause the air/plasma to expand very rapidly producing a short, intense pulse (aka an explosion, if it's energetic enough), and the peak in the spectrum of the radiation emitted will be hard UV that penetrates common welding masks.