edit: five year old. we’re looking for something a kid can understand. don’t need full theory with every implication here, just the basic concept.
edit edit: Y’ALL ARE AMAZING!!
In: 4172
Application
The neutral wire is intended to carry the return current to the panel where it is tied back into ground. The neutral wire can drift a few volts above ground at an outlet due to the voltage this return current creates down its length.
The ground wire is not intended to carry return current under normal circumstances which means that even at the farthest outlet it is always 0V and safe to touch. During a fault (something goes boom) current can flow down the ground conductor, but it should also still provide a good enough connection to all the metal you can touch to keep things at a safe voltage level even if things are going horribly wrong inside the box
Ground is always safe to touch, neutral is occasionally unsafe and therefore always shielded from touch.
Certain electrical protection systems “check” the current flowing through the hot terminal and the neutral. If current going in via the hot terminal does not equal the current leaving the neutral, the circuit protection will activate shutting off the power. So if there was a sizeable current discharging through the ground, this would be detected as a serious malfunction.
If you have an older house (like me), there are two wires per service point, and they are both black. Buy a Klein $20 pen-style voltage tester. It will identify the neutral and hot. Slip some 3/8ths white heat shrink over the neutral and hit it with the heat gun (no cigarette lighters).
If an appliance has one blade wider than the other (on the plug), the wide blade is neutral.
For instance, I removed a light fixture, and installed a ceiling fan. Since the bulbs were LED, it matters which wire is neutral, unlike old-timey filament bulbs. Since they were low-watt LED, the load on that service point was not high, and the wires do not feel warm in use.
Put a blank booklet and pen next to the breaker box, and every time you identify which breaker goes to any appliance, write it down. It will save you headaches and time in the future. Have a working flashlight next to the breaker panel (with a set of spare batteries) for power outages.
ELI5: They’re the same. The neutral is a specific return path, the ground is for safety. The electricity goes to the same place in the end.
Ok. Think of electrical current like water in a pipe.
The water starts out in the pipe (hot side, full potential)
The water goes down the pie to the tap (load,losing? some potential)
The water goes through the tap, doing its work (light is on, potential even lower)
Water goes to the drain to go back to the reservoir/tank after doing its work( current to neutral, no potential- or very low potential)
Drain line to reservoir (neutral, no or very low potential)
Drain line down to tank also has vent line to prevent over pressure up to atmosphere (neutral -very low potential- tied to ground -theoretically no potential as safety- therefore neutral can’t ever have real long lasting potential)
Kinda
Sorta
Electricity needs to flow to do stuff, so when it goes to some electrical thing, it also needs to come back from there and yes it is also consumed and not infinitely reusable, for this think bicycle chain, needs to go from pedals to wheel, but also come back, but power is still consumed.
Anyways that is base you need to know, now to question itself:
Neutral is for electrocity to flow back, while Ground is for safety.
They could work as each other, but in some cases it would be dangerous.
Ground uses separate colour wire in installations, to make sure it is not mixed with neutral or other wires.
Any of plugs can be placet to socke one way or in way where you rotate them hal circle, meaning “live” and “neutral” could be connected whatever way into device, so it is good to have one wire “ground” that is guranteed to have no power in it.
Ground is also usually connected to surface of device, so that if some wire inside device gets loose and touches the surface of said device, it will short circuit to ground and trip fuse, instead of letting surface become electroc and dangerous.
Edit: super short version: theoretically they could be used for each other usually, but ground is there as separate safety thing.
Picture a swimming pool on a cliff overlooking the ocean. There is a pool pump that pumps water up out of the pool to the pool heater on the roof of the house and then the water runs back down another pipe out of the heater back to the pool. The pipe connected to the pump pushing the water up to the heater is the black wire – the hot. The water pressure is voltage. The amount of water going through the pipe is current, amperage. The amount the heater slows the water down is resistance. The pipe back down to the pool is the neutral wire. The emergency release valve that dumps the water out of the heater to run back down to the ocean below the cliff (not the pool) if something goes wrong is the ground.
The neutral returns the power to the source of the power. The ground returns the power to the ground. Literally. To be absorbed into the earth like water into a sponge.
u/_pounders_
OK, Electrician here:
On AC Systems
The neutral is there to carry current back to the source, in most cases that is the transformer in on the pole. This completes the circuit.
The ground is there as a safety to catch extreme spikes in voltage (e.g. Lightning strikes) and the higher voltage overcomes the resistance of the earth.
They are tied together at the “Service Entrance” (typically your breaker panel) because most common faults will not have enough energy to be properly absorbed by the earth. It also provides an uncharged circuit to tie to metal casings on things like kitchen appliances.
ELI5: Neutral is the floor of your house, ground is where your house sits. There’s no practical difference in altitude between the two, but if your house floor and the ground are suddenly not the same something bad is going on. For safety, we keep an eye on both.
In a lot of scenarios there isn’t much of a difference. Its a safety feature.
If everything works well the live and neutral should be all you need.
If something goes wrong the earth acts as a second neutral to take all the current away from the fault (i.e. you) and safely back to complete the circuit. Its a safety feature.
In reality the earth usually has protection on it to detect current and trip the circuit too. And some devices even use a functional earth that does useful stuff. In super fancy designs it gets even more complex. But for eli5 just thinking of it as a safety wire is good enough.
Latest Answers