I am in need of electrical wire at the moment, and i found some old headphones. Would the wire be salvageable to transport small amounts of energy (in a basic device, nothing fancy)?
In general, no. Depends on the voltage and current. Headphone wires are usually thin and without insulation for high voltages, and may be shielded. small amounts of energy is too vague.
Well, yeah, a wire is a wire, usually anyways. As was said above, it depends on what you want to use it for. If you want to use it to power some kind of AC appliance, I'd say it's not a good idea as the insulation on the wire may not be able to handle the much higher voltage involved. And usually headphones use something like #26 wire which can't really handle much more than a few hundred milliamps of current before getting too hot. So yes, it's just a copper wire like almost any wire. But it has it's limitations of voltage and current carrying capacity. If you want to use it to power your toatser, no. If you want to use it to power a small motor with some D-cell batteries, no problem. Use it!
Generally, the answer is NO. This is because the headphone wire insulation voltage rating is normally not high enough. However, if the headphone wire has a voltage rating printed on the insulation, that is equal or greater than the voltage of the circuit you want to use this wire for, it will be OK. If the wire has the type, such as TH, THW, THWN or something similar, you can look on the internet to find the voltage rating of that type wire. TexMav
