Good Question: 'Reply All': The Lottery, Phone Chargers & 'CCO Pet Adoptions
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Saturday's Powerball jackpot is a record $600 million. And Kjirsten Johnson from Forest Lake asked: What happens if a winner doesn't claim it?
By law, if someone wins, but doesn't claim their prize, the money goes into the state's General Fund -- the main bank account for state government.
That happens with scratch offs, or any Minnesota Lottery game.
If it's a multi-state game, like Mega Millions or Powerball, they take the prize and send it back to all the states involved in the game.
So Minnesota would get a piece of an unclaimed Powerball, in proportion to the percentage of tickets typically sold in the state.
Sherrie Stableski from St. Louis Park wondered: Can leaving my cell phone charger plugged in really run up my electric bill?
Sherrie, WCCO wants to know, since I have a bunch of chargers plugged in at my desk.
Phone chargers typically consume 0.1 watts of electricity when not charging. Compare that to a microwave, which consumes 3.5 watts.
Your Nintendo Wii, moreover, is the equivalent of 95 mobile phone chargers.
The truth is that your cell phone charger is barely sucking up a trickle -- and having a couple chargers plugged in is not a big deal.
Every Friday at noon for years, WCCO has had an adopt-a-pet segment. Jessica Barnum from Bemidji wondered: How many WCCO pets get adopted?
We asked Carrie Libera from the Animal Humane Society, and the answer is...all of them.
They don't know if the TV segment directly leads to the adoptions -- they don't track that.
However, Carrie said the phones start ringing the minute the pet is on TV.
It generates a lot of interest, and often, but not always, the pet goes home with a viewer.
