Always heard about it but never knew why.
In: Technology
Circuits work just fine without it. It’s only there for safety reasons in case something goes wrong.
If voltage gets somewhere it’s not supposed to and you touch the device, that voltage can form a current through your body. Which can severely injure or kill you.
Grounding connects almost anywhere rogue voltage can be, and gives it an easy path back to the panel.
Unfortunately, a really satisfying answer is well beyond the scope of ELI5. Take a community college course named something like “Physics: Electricity and Magnetism” if you want to properly understand this.
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