Bill Rubenstein writes:
One minor correction: The hot wires are 180 degrees out of phase.

Technically (not that it matters in practice), the hot wires are *in
phase* but with opposite polarity voltages. After all, you only have
one secondary winding on that transformer; the "neutral" is really a
center tap or halfway-voltage.

There is such a thing as two-phase power, where the hots are 90
degrees out of phase (three or four wire systems) but they're obsolete
these days.

But those details don't matter for our purposes, I'm just being
pedantic.