2007-02-06 23:49:30 · 4 answers · asked by paritosh k 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
Earth is grounded. Neutral is the fixed voltage side of a 1-phase circuit (e.g. 110 VAC) and it is usually grounded, but not necessarily.
Example in a vacuum cleaner, the plug has three connectors: line, neutral and ground. The line and neutral will connect to the fan motor. The ground will connect to the metallic frame of the vacuum cleaner. If a short occurs between neutral and frame, not much will happen because the neutral is grounded at the nearest transformer. If the line is shorted with frame then a large current will flow to the earth and cause the line protection (breaker or fuse) to open the circuit.
The reason why we use a ground conductor is to increase the amount of copper to ground, thus lowering the resistance of the path to ground and minimize the possibility of electrical shocks if you were to touch the frame.
2007-02-07 01:12:30 · answer #1 · answered by catarthur 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Catarthur answered this pretty well, however I'd like to add that earth or ground is the _local_ potential of the physical earth - that is, the earth beneath your house. Neutral is the fixed side of the power generation circuit and is probably very close to the earth potential at the place it was generated - which could in principle be very different from your local earth.
2007-02-07 02:36:06 · answer #2 · answered by charn1407 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In a circuit, "earth" is considered to be at absolute zero potential. In reality, there's no such thing as absolute zero potential; everything has potential relative to something else. For example, the positive pole of a battery has 1.5 volts of potential relative to the negative pole. If you hooked the negative side of a battery up to the positive side of another battery, then the positive side of the first battery would still have a potential of 1.5 volts relative to the negative side of the first battery; the negative side of the first battery would have 0 potential with respect to the positive side of the second battery; the positive side of the first battery would have 3 volts potential with respect to the negative side of the second battery. If you wanted, you could design a circuit in which the connection between the negative of battery 1 and the positive of battery 2 were used as the 0 point for all the other voltages in the circuit; that would be considered the "neutral" point. The positive side of battery 1 would be 1.5 volts above neutral; the negative side of battery 2 would be 1.5 volts below neutral. Only if you also connected the neutral to ground would "neutral" be considered at 0 "earth" potential.
2007-02-07 01:10:24 · answer #3 · answered by Grizzly B 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nothing. I assume you're referring to circuits. In the US, we call it ground also.
2007-02-07 00:16:39 · answer #4 · answered by Gene 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋