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From: robf@mcs213k.cs.umr.edu (Rob Fugina)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: ANOTHER house wiring question (this one's basic)
Message-ID: <1948@umriscc.isc.umr.edu>
Date: 14 Jan 91 20:18:32 GMT
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In article <kJhTxoE@quack.sac.ca.us> mrapple@quack.sac.ca.us (Nick Sayer) writes:
>Now ground and neutral clearly are not the same thing. I would
>expect negative side effects were I foolish enough to hook
>a light bulb between hot and ground.

Ground and neutral are exactly the same thing.  If you were to trace the
wires back to your breaker box, you would find bare wires (ground) and white
wires (neutral) both connected to a grounding strip.  The hot wire's potential
varies from ~170V above ground to ~170V below ground.  The two wires that come
from the pole are both hot, BUT, the sine waves are 180 degrees out of phase
with one another, so when one is at +170, the other is at -170, and if you
connect something to those two, you will have a 340V sine wave.  (values are
peak, not RMS...RMS would be about 120 and 240).

MY QUESTION is, if you don't have 3-wire connections in your house, why
can't you connect the white wire to the ground lug and conuit/boxes, etc???

Rob robf@cs.umr.edu