Recent content by confundido

This is a question we were asked quite some time ago: Consider a circuit shaped as a rectangle, with two very long straight wires (parallel to one another), connected on one end by a battery and on the other end by a resistor. We were asked to show--and this is not difficult--that if the...

Ok. So in that situation, all of the voltage drop would occur over whatever appliance we have plugged in, and the neutral wire would be exactly the same as Earth ground always. Correct?

Yes. That makes sense to me. So in the perfectly idealized situation (or if we used a superconducting neutral wire), there would be no voltage drop, correct? (But there obviously is, in the real world.)

I understand that in an electrical outlet, "ground" is wired directly from the outlet to the ground, whereas neutral is wired from all the outlets to the breaker box or wherever in the house, then to the ground, and that neutral is intended to carry current. That being said, I am confused...