Electricity is Shocking

On Saturday, in addition to all of the other things we learned, my Dad ended by showing us how to change out an electrical socket and a switch. I'm fairly certain that my Dad fears I'm going to either burn the house down by switching the wires or by testing a live wire and sending off a shower of sparks. Both of which he's justified in worrying about.

When he came to the part about the light switches we had already turned the electricity back on, so he was pointing to different areas and explaining the intricacies. That's when he showed us this handy little tool that you can use to test the unit to see if it's 'live.' Of course, I had to give this a go with 'live' electricity. It went something like this:

Kristy: "Can I try?"

Dad: "Ok, but don't touch the metal!"

Kristy puts the wires in the right place while bending her hand at an awkward angle to avoid skin contact with the metal. The wires come in contact with the third metal area and a flame bursts out of the unit. Kristy jump backwards.

Kevin: (Jumping backwards) "Ahhhhh!"

Dad: (Sighing and collecting himself) "Now that was a good lesson on what not to do."

Kristy: "I thought you meant my hand, not the plate!"

Dad: (Sighing again) I meant both.

I've been turning off the electricity for the past two days and switching out electrical sockets. Above is my before and after photo of one of the switches.