Power is generated at the powerstation, gets sent through cables to our house, through wires into my microwave. My microwave has a fault so the current goes down the earth wire into the ground but then where? Where is the ground connected backup to this circuit to complete the link and allow the current to flow??
In: Physics
The long and short of it is that you don’t *need* a complete circuit, its just the easiest way to explain eletricity. The standard water analogy explains this well: imagine electric lines as a water hose instead. If you cut one of the lines, its like you capped the hose at that point. Water/electricity is still pushing against the end, but has nowhere to go and thus doesn’t move. A complete circuit solves this problem of “nowhere to go” by pushing all the electrons in a loop, but its not the only solution. Ground connections solve this by essentially being a giant tank: electrons don’t get backed up because there is so much extra room in ground that you can just keep shoving electrons into it without affecting the overall makeup of it.
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