To provide your electrical devices powers, you need electricity to flow in a circuit. In an American household outlet, the circuit is made up of a vertical slot, which is linked to the hot wire and a bigger left vertical slot connected with a neutral wire. The device which is plugged into the circuit completes the whole circuit unit. So you must be wondering why the third prong is needed?
Why the third prong is required?
The ground is the third prong. The neutral and the ground are linked with an earth ground in the main electrical circuit breaker panel in the house.The difference between two circuits is -neutral wire, which is connected to a slot and carries some amount of current whereas the ground doesn’t take any current and is not attached to the circuit until something is wrong.
Use it to connect the external electrical parts of a device to the earth, and in normal conditions, it’s completely unwanted. That’s why you can use a three-prong over a two-prong plug adapter to avoid using the ground line; your device will work perfectly fine with a three-prong plug too.
So, the question is why we are having a ground and a neutral when they both tie to the earth’s ground in the main electrical circuit breaker panel? Among other benefits, the most important one is that it can save your life from the sudden electric shock that can happen because of something wrong within the electrical parts of your device.
In such a situation, when you touch your devices, and there’s no separate ground, it could result in you becoming a path to ground, and electricity will flow through your body until there’s a power cut off.
Now you must have understood why some people use three prongs instead of two and why we also recommend people to use three-prong plugs.
