On Monday, November 25, 2013 4:17:55 PM UTC-5, Danny D'Amico wrote:
On Mon, 25 Nov 2013 20:43:01 +0100, nestork wrote:



And what about this "ground," as mentioned above? The power company

essentially uses the earth as one of the wires in the power system. The

earth is a pretty good conductor and it is huge, so it makes a good

return path for electrons.



I'm glad you found that, because there MUST be a complete circuit for

current to flow (assuming an imbalance, as someone else noted).



As has been explained a dozen times now, there is a complete
circuit and under normal conditions, the earth is *not* part of
it. You continue to ignore the *neutral" and the fact that with
a balanced 3 phase load, the entire current flows in the 3 phase
conductors.






The fact that the earth isn't obviously a "wire" is lost on some

people who simply assume earth is ground potential and that's that.



But, that's OK.



That's because *both* ways of thinking work just fine, simply because the

earth contains more electrons than anything on earth (which goes without

saying). It's like the car frame example. Exactly. Only on a huge scale.


Nonsense. You and Nestork are claiming that the power company
delivers power using the earth as one of the conductor that
complete the circuit. That isn't an alternate way of thinking, it's
just wrong.



So, both concepts work simply because earth and the car frame are special

things that don't look like wires, but, they act both like zero potential

and like wires.



More obfuscation and confusion.




Specifically, the earth is both a zero potential, and a huge conductor

back to the power company.



Wrong.




As Gallileo supposedly said on his deathbed to those who couldn't

fathom the wonders of the earth ... "and yet, it does".

Gallileo didn't know much about electricity, did he?