In electricity, what does it mean when someone or something is “grounded” and what does it serve for?

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Like the title says what does it exactly mean when something is grounded? What does it serve for with humans and electrical system?
Also presume someone somehow gets zapped by a massive amount of energy from some source: is it safer or worse to be grounded and does it matter what we are grounded to?

In: Physics

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you place a ball on a table, the ball might fall off the table on its own (if it were moving to begin with), and fall to hit the *ground*

However when on the ground, the ball will never spontaneously “fall upwards”. And that should make plain old common sense.

In electricity, instead of gravity we have “voltage”. Performs the same function, except we have control over it.

Saying something has a specific voltage doesn’t mean anything by itself. If the ball is on the table, but there are borders on the table preventing the ball from falling, ground is irrelevant. It’s on the ground as far as it’s concerned.

So we have to make up some *reference*, some particular value of the voltage that we are just going to call “zero” or “ground”, and all other voltages will be measured *in relation* to the ground.

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