I always thought AC current requires 2 wires to carry the current both ways just like DC. Recently I read a post on this sub saying neutral wires go to ground. What am I missing?
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so the important thing here is that voltage doesn’t really exist in a vacuum,
Voltage is the difference in electrical potential between two points, in DC its typically between the positive and negative terminals of a power supply/battery, in AC its typically the live and the neutral. The Neutral is connected to earth somewhere upstream of where the supply is being used (substation, power plant…) to give a 0v reference (the potential of the ground at that point), against which the live can have a potential difference of whatever your local mains voltage is relative to that potential (because the earth is so big, the potential effectively dissapates down to nothing, so its safe to consider it to be 0v),
The Earth is a special type of cable that does a different job to the live and neutral, in normal operation, its not supposed to carry any current, its just supposed to be there to provide a nice, easy path to earth in any sitatuion where a fault with a wire/component causes things to become live that you don’t want being live (like the case of a device, or a water pipe), the idea being that electricity is always trying to take the easiest path to ground, its better that that path is down a wire than through a human, or a gas main
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