In alt.home.repair, on Fri, 27 Nov 2020 20:28:19 -0800 (PST), Robin
McDaniel wrote:

On Friday, November 27, 2020 at 9:03:54 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On 11/27/20 10:41 PM, Robin McDaniel wrote:
I accidentally let the two screwed wire terminals in a socket fall out of the socket. I know that the gold one is for the hot wire and the silver is for neutral....but once they have fallen out of the socket, how do I know which slot they each properly go back into?

If this a standard screw-in light socket, the gold/hot goes to the
center contact, the silver/neutral goes to the screw shell.

See
https://www.familyhandyman.com/artic...g-electronics/
Thank you for the link and comment. Unfortunately, mine is not set up in quite this way. Neither indentation (to put the gold or silver screw terminal into) is lined up with the gold or center.....it sort of sits there by itself with the indents for the screw terminals on either side. So it's sort of a cr- - shoot which is which.

No, not if you use a voltohmeter to see which screw goes to the center
and which goes to the shell.

If you're going to be fiddling with electric stuff, you shoudl have one
anyhow.

Home Depot deosn't seem to have the really cheap (but plenty good
enough) digital meter anymore, but they have
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Commerci...015B/202353292
and
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Commerci...301S/305089516

Harbor Freight still has what I had in mind for $6.79. Plenty good
enough
https://www.harborfreight.com/7-func...ter-63759.html

This seems to be the cheapest one at Amazon, $10, a little fancier.
https://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-Mult...f=sr_1_51_sspa
Watch the video.

In general it's worth a little more to have a digital meter, IMO, but
they have one flaw in that they are so sensitive that they might show 20
or 30 votes in house wiring even when the circuit breaker is off, but if
you remember that, they're more useful**. Analogue meters don't do
that.

You put the setting on ohms, the section marked by an omega in Greek,
and within that: ohms x 10 or times 100, or 200 or 2000, (but not on 20M
or 200M because then you might end up measuring the resistance of your
body). Put one lead on the shell and then put the other on each of the
screw terminals until you find which one is conneccted to the shell.
If neither is, you probably have the socket off so turn it on and try
again. Well, actually the switch turns the center contact off, not the
shell.


**For example, the Amazon one above has a hold button, so you can
measure something when you can't see the meter and still read the
setting even after the test leads are no longer in place. It doesn't
come up very often, but it can.
And it's auto-polarity. When it's not alternating current, there is
positive and negative, but the meter figures it out, instead of
requiring you to put the leads on right.
More expensive ones are auto-ranging.