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
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.
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