Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Polarized Plugs for 120 VAC
Message-ID: <1988Nov15.235138.26270@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <686@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <4759@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 88 23:51:38 GMT

In article <4759@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>It seems to me that it would be far safer to have each of the two hot
>wires be at +/- 55 volts relative to ground...
>Touching both would be just as lethal as before.  Touching one and
>ground at the same time would be much safer.

This assumes that you are as likely to touch one as the other.  Not so;
in things like hot-chassis TV sets, not to mention ordinary lamp sockets,
the odds of touching one side are much higher than those of touching the
other side.  So it makes sense to approximately ground one side, and try
to make that the more exposed one.
-- 
Sendmail is a bug,             |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
not a feature.                 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu