4 ms·
I thought the primary reason for a separate ground was because neutral was a current return path and thus could develop a voltage on it due to resistance of wir
by colanderman 14y ago
I thought the primary reason for a separate ground was because neutral was a current return path and thus could develop a voltage on it due to resistance of wires, whereas a true ground carries no current and thus will not develop a voltage?
- DenisM 14y agoI remember there are two reasons for the third prong, and neither is mentioned in the article. The first reason is the one you have outlined - the larger the current, the bigger the differential between the actual ground via and the neutral wire in the appliance. The second reason is that if you're using a transformer to change the voltage, the output of the transformer is not connected to the input, and thus can have arbitrary large voltage differential with the ground due to charge accumulation, and so it needs to be grounded. Now I'm getting fuzzy here, but I think there is a reason why you can't connect one of the transformers inputs to one of it outputs (the neutral one) to provide the "grounding" this way, so the third wire is used. I've noticed that devices which do not need to provide voltage conversion usually lack the ground prong, e.g. heaters.