"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
...
It sure seemed counter intuitive that the third prong would be neutral,
and the device is ungrounded. But, I found a couple web sites that say it
is. And says that it bonds the neutral to the frame. Go figure.


For common house circits there is no real electrical differance in the
neutral and ground wires. They both start at the same point in the breaker
panel and run parallel with each other to the socket or device that they are
connected to.
..
Mechanically there is often a differance. The ground will either be bare or
green and the neutral will be white by the electrical code. They may even
be differant sizes.

When used in the 240 volt circuits the 4 th wire ground is just a redundant
wire that is connected to the frame of the device . This is an added safety
precaution incase for some reason the neutral wire would become disconnected
if only a 3 wire circuit was used.