eli5: Whats the purpose for the ground wire?

Question

I understand if we touch the wire and were are on the ground it creates a complete circuit. So we get electrocuted.

But how does the ground or earth wire works, so that we don’t get electrocuted?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

The ground wire gets electrocuted instead of you and when that happens it – hopefully – trips the circuit breaker so that you don’t get electrocuted too.