What does a neutral do?
In: 150
Electricity needs to go in a loop to complete a circuit. So if you’ve got a wire bringing you fresh electricity from the power plant, you need a second wire that brings your used electricity back to the powerplant when you’re done with it.
It’s a similar idea to the shower in your house – you have a faucet that fresh water comes out of, and a drain/sewer system for dirty water to go back to the water treatment plant. If you take 10 gallons from the faucet, 10 gallons go down the drain. Similary, if you pull 10 amps of current from the hot wire, there’s 10 amps of current going back down the neutral wire.
However, because there’s no pressure behind it, you won’t necessarily get shocked if you touch the neutral. The same way that if you have a burst pipe to your faucet, it sprays out water constantly, but if you have a leaky drain pipe it only drips when you’re taking a shower.
Also, to extend it a bit, a ground wire is a bit like having a second drain hole in your floor. If your primary drain gets clogged and the water won’t shut off, the floor drain will collect the overflow. That’s why there’s a lot of amateur bullshit with mixing neutrals and ground – you need both wires for safety (with specific rules on how they are tied together) but electricity works fine with just one of them.
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