poor power factor coils

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Arpit Thomas" <arpit-at-inzo-dot-org> 

Hi, I was thinking about the way inductive ballasts work, and I realised 
that most of our coils will have quite shockingly bad power factors.I'm not 
very sure of the physics here, so please excuse me if I'm talking absolute 
garbage. WIth my microwave oven transformers, 2 of them almost shorted on 
their outputs tends to cause my 35 amp breaker to blow. However it almost 
never blows the 16 amp fuse.  WOuld this be because of the high peak 
currents from a poor power factor? Or does a poor power factor not imply a 
whole lot of current in a short time, but merely a phase difference between 
voltage and current?


regards,
Arpit Thomas- thinking of ways to get the most power from his 16 amp circuit