What do the colors on an american plug refer to?

If anyone can help me, I have an american style power cable that I have cut the end off, so that I can wire on british plug. The problem is i'm not sure which color refers to the earth, live and neutral points.

The wire colors are:
Green (I think this is earth)
Black (I think this is neutral)
White (I think this is live)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

P

Thanks for the info m8.

It's just a PC power lead, that I was going to have to throw away because of the Amercan plug on it, thought it would be a shame to bin it. Hopefully I wont be frying anything apart from my breakfast

Cheers

P

Wapaaga is right, as US house AC wiring goes, black is hot, white is nuetral, green is ground (earth).

<font color=green>I've had enough cookies.</font color=green> <font color=blue><i>Got milk?</i></font color=blue>

But there's a catch even greater than that. Try pulling 10amps of 220V on 14-gauge wire and you'll rapidly find out.

10amps x 220V = 2200 watts
10amps x 110V = 1100 watts

If you take the melted copper, and fashion it properly, you could build a rather nifty heatsink for your gfx card ram......

JC don't do it.

In america green is ground (earth) and is the round pin, black is hot (live) and is the smaller of the two flat plugs, and white is neutral (return) and is the larger of the flat plugs. I am very sure about this as it is part of my job.

Whoops I guess you already know that. I did't scroll down far enough before posting.

FYI Our house current is AC so it is not positive or negative but both. Stuff will usually work with the live and return swapped but it is not as safe. The green ground goes actually into the ground at your house. The white is the return and is bonded to the green at the box. So the difference between the return and ground is that under normal operation the return carries current and the ground should carry none (or very little). Hot is 120VAC RMS above ground potential. At the device the ground wire is connected to the case of the device, the hot and return supply the actual power to the load.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Lakedude on 06/22/01 05:23 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

I hope that confirmation from Fatburger didn't hurt him or his computer! No posts from Porkstone since.

<font color=green>I've had enough cookies.</font color=green> <font color=blue><i>Got milk?</i></font color=blue>

I wasn't blaming you, exactly. I was just pointing out that he was wrong and you confirmed him. Therefore, he may grab a live black wire expecting it to be nuetral. I doubt he will grab any wires while he is plugged in, though. As Lakedude pointed out, his power supply would probably work with those two wires crossed.

Household AC in US comes into your house in three wires. One is +110V RMS, One is -110V RMS, and one is nuetral. If you look at your fuse panel (or cicuit breaker box) you will notice two "hot" power bars that have "fingers" that point toward the other bar (they kind of interlace, but don't touch each other). When a 110V circuit breaker is attached to the panel it makes contact with one power bar. The breaker directly below will make contact with the opposite power bar. So, about half of your 110V circuits are running on +110V and half are running on -110V (your appliances won't care which). A 220V breaker is double the size of a 110V breaker and makes contact with both power bars (+110V to -110V gives 220V). The general rule is to use black for the hot wires that come off of the breakers to your outlets/appliances, white for nuetral, green or bare copper is ground and usually attached to copper water pipe or copper rod driven into the ground. Red is usually used for the second hot lead for a 220V line. And that ends this lesson in Home Wiring 101

<font color=green>I've had enough cookies.</font color=green> <font color=blue><i>Got milk?</i></font color=blue>

BACF?

I usually use the word 'contractor' as an expletive. As in, "Holy F**king Contractors, Batman!"

<b>B</b>ackword <b>A</b>$$ <b>C</b>ountry <b>F</b>...well you figure it out.

Ahhh, transmission power loss... High school physics all over again. :^)

Another computer wanted. Donations accepted. :^)

Because that is the maximum power drop they accept without burning.

If you have a circuit that needs to pumb current X you need to know the resistance and the power rating.

You need to supply 2A to a device and the resistor is a 10 ohm resistor, you know it will drop 2^2x10 = 40W, therefore you know what size resistor to buy.

-* This Space For Rent *-
email for application details

The wattage rating is the max power a resistor can safely handle but I don't know why they are rated in watts instead of amps. Fuses are rated in amps, volts and current interupting. In a normal low voltage circuit the only important rating is the amps. If you are running straight off a large transformer then the max current interupting could be very important. Large transformers have large inductance and once they start supplying current they don't wanna stop. So if you fuse a circuit with too low a interupt rating the fuse could blow but the current could ark across like lightning and never be stopped.


Interrupt ratings are usually very high, like in the thousands of amps.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Lakedude on 06/23/01 07:11 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

true - I cannot remember now why this is so. I'm sure there must have been a good, but currently obscure reason....

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It is 10amps. The exact math in AC is too complicated for me to explain or even remember so I'll try to explain in terms of DC. In DC electronics a +12vdc from a power supply above ground is like (+)120ac (I hate doing this, this way). A power supply with both +12 and -12vdc above and below ground making 24vdc between the two is like 240vac with (+)120 and (-)120 vac above and below ground together to make a total of 240vac(sort of). OK so now we are thinking in terms of dc which everybody understands better. If we need to deliver 240 watts of power to a load with a +12vdc ps we need to pump out 20amps of current to a load of .6 ohms. To protect this circuit you would use one 20 amp circuir breaker on the hot line only, you don't fuse a return. So 20amps goes out on the hot and comes back on the return. Now lets say we need to deliver the same 240 using a power supply that puts out both +12 and -12 vdc. Since we now have a total of 24vdc across the load the total current will need to be 10 amps and the loads resistance needs to be 2.4 ohms. Since only two wires go to the load 10 amps must travel thru all 3 parts of the circuit. All 3 circuit elements are in series so the current in each must be the same. The 3 elements are: 1)the wire from the +12vdc to the load, 2)the load, and 3) the wire from the load to -12vdc. If you were to try to protect the 24vdc circuit with circuit breakers you would use two 10 amp circuit breakers one for each 12vdc leg. The total current is only 10 amps (10 going out and 10 comming back) not 20. If you expand this same logic to ac you can think of the lift as being powered by 10amps going out and 10 comming back in. It is only 10 amps total. Of course all of this is totally wrong technically but it helps visualize what is going on.



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by LaKeDuDe on 06/24/01 01:45 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

green-yellolw = (PE) protection earth

Sorry,i don't understand what you exactly mean Cactusbrother????????????????

3 phase 400 VAC

I thought the Swiss were about letting things die with dignity(ass). Since when have they got into resurrecting the dead?

HINT: Check the date of the last post before yours.