Charlie wrote:
On 5 Oct 2005 01:21:04 -0700, "blackboab" wrote:


The LIVE and NEUTRAL wires are both passing current and the current is
reversing at 50 times a second so that they swap over the roles of
positive and negative.


er..sort of.

can i get electrocuted by holding the NEUTRAL ?


Yes. See above.


a circuit only needs two wires to be complete.


?


so how does the third wire - ground - fit in the circuit ?


Electricity is generated three-phase:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_phase
(for various reasons including efficiency)

and then for domestic supply you get one of the three live conductors,
and the neutral:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-...electric_power

The ground connector is for safety only - it's carried round the house
and connected to various bits of exposed metal, including those that
are part of your electrical equipment. If then you have a fault in
some device where live becomes connected to these same bits of
exposed metal, a large current briefly flows to ground and your
fuse/MCB/whatever pops, cutting off the circuit.

C

Arggh, whenever people post wikipedia links I always waste hours
clicking on hyperlinks and end up learning bizarre things.

On that topic, I have a theory that in order to create the ultimate AI
computer, all that is needed it to write a program that allows the
machine to cross reference unknown words in text files. Then simply
feed the entire contents of the OED into it and let it site there for a
bit while it cross references every word in it. It will then be able to
reccursively cross-reference every word and gain total and utter
comprehension of the English language.