Lee DunaGemini : How to wire a plug
onslaught545Whoever thought this would burn your house down didn’t read the diagram. The only wire external to the circuit is the ground.
This is 100% a safe way to wire an outlet, provided you don’t expect it to deliver power.
Darkassassin07This is a plug, not an outlet; and it shorts the live + neutral pins together. There is no ground pin present, though a wire labeled ground is also being shorted to the live+neutral pins. (basing ‘pins’ on shape/colour and ignoring that at least one is in the wrong position)
If this doesn’t immediately trip the breaker when plugged in, it’s because you have an open neutral; and now whatever’s on the end of that ground wire (typically exposed metal) is live.
Norah (pup/it/she)The live and neutral pins are wired together, so there’s not really a reason for the power to travel to that ground wire. Unless the path to the ground of the device, and then from there to actual ground, is shorter, then nothing will flow that way. It’s absolutely not safe, but a number of other factors would need to be present before it were deadly.
Unless the path to the ground of the device, and then from there to actual ground, is shorter, then nothing will flow that way.
That’s not true. Electricity will take all available paths to return to ground, with current flow relative to the resistance present. In other words, two low resistance paths will share similar amounts of current when both are connected to power.
If you were touching anything connected to that ‘ground’ wire while also connected to a true ground yourself; you could receive a harmful shock from plugging this in, even with a breaker in-line and successfully tripping. A GFCI device should prevent that shock, but a regular breaker will not trip fast enough.
True actually. If this were the plug for a washing machine, and you were touching it and the tap for the water inlet, you would definitely get shocked still. Edit: The washing machine itself also wouldn’t generally have a connection to ground that way, as they usually use plastic hoses.