On Friday, November 15, 2013 2:35:35 PM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:
"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.



There is however a big difference. The neutral carries current.
Unhook a neutral and grab hold of it in a properly functioning
circuit and you could be dead. Unhook a ground wire, and unless
something is malfunctioning, that can't happen.


..

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.

By that standard, the ground on any 3 prong 120V outlet is similarly
redundant. Could just as well connect the ground there to neutral.