

| Subject: | Re: Grounds (was Quality Inverters) |
| From: | Jack |
| Date: | Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:46:55 -0700 |
Not directly related to inverters but perhaps of some interest. A pet peeve of mine regards the word, "Ground". As used in electricity and electronics, the word is an unfortunate historical artifact which, in my humble opinion, should be removed from use, since it's too often misunderstood. It implies some magic iso-potential conductor connected to earth which rarely exists outside of a text book. Given common conditions such as high fault currents, fast rise/fall surges (e.g., sparks), that "ground" is anything but iso-potential. This misunderstanding can lead to serious problems, even from designers who should know better. (This isn't even beginning to deal with high speed digital circuitry, analog instrumentation, A/D, D/A and RF systems.) Much better to use the words, frame, shell, chassis, shield, common, 3rd wire, green wire, etc. Those more descriptive terms provide better understandings of what the conductor is and (sometimes) what its purpose is. In large system schematics, we might see the identifiers, frame-1, frame-2, frame-3, shield-1, etc., even though the connections may be tied together somewhere. Sorry to rant. And sorry if the above makes little sense to you. You have to have been there. //Jack
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