I waffled about posting this thought, however I'll throw it out and hope I don't get slammed too much (Standard disclaimer)
Why is a good ground good?
Ground is called ground because it's our universal reference when it comes to electricity. The reason is simple. As we all were taught, atoms make up molecules. Atoms are comprised of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Since they are neutrons, we'll ignore them. Things want balance. If you have a lump of dirt that has more protons than electrons, they need electrons for ?balance?. Don't care right?
It gets better because that is exactly how our planet is. The sun fires out a gazillion electrons every second and they hit the earth and still there is never enough to balance out the molecules on our planet. The dirt always needs more. This is opportunity knocking. Now that we have learned to generate power, We can bump electrons free of their orbits. They also look for balance. They want protons. (Sounds like a singles bar)
Getting back to boating... as our alternators, gauges, pumps, lights, etc. look useful without ground, they just won't work as we need that attraction to actually move electrons to protons. Kinda like a tree having a root system that you don't see just as big as the branches that you do see.
If you need an analogy, we can use water. A 1 metre pipe supplying water into a .5 metre pipe just won't work. You want unity. 1 to 1 makes sense. If you have a 12 gauge wire feeding something, sure as sh** you need 12 gauge on the other side or bigger, or else bad things happen. Go ahead and throw a 20 gauge ground wire on a 12 gauge circuit and pound the transfer through. For a while the poor skinny wire will try to move all the electrons along... works up a sweat, turns red, starts to burn and peel, and finally collapses. ?Holy Crap Honey! I smell smoke.? Hope you get the picture. A corroded connection works just as well as a small wire. You want all of your connections to be able to say ?nothing to see here... move along?
Somewhere, someone is thinking ?Hey wait... you are suggesting that electricity moves negative to Positive... Yup!
Conventional current flow, VS. electron flow. It's a mind twister.
Never ever ignore your ground connections. It'll save you a world of grief every time. Kinda like a life jacket...
One more thing for the audio guys. When I was young (dating myself here) the neg. of our speakers were grounded to the car body. Worked great! However, someone somewhere decided to ?float the internal ground of a radio in order to achieve more ?wattage out?. The moment that happened, if you tried to marry the grounds together, your radio would blow. The radio system just wasn?t equipped to handle the current flow of the entire car inside a little radio circuit... kinda like a flood because the banks weren't high enough. Now days, floating grounds are common place. Keep that in mind.
Why is a good ground good?
Ground is called ground because it's our universal reference when it comes to electricity. The reason is simple. As we all were taught, atoms make up molecules. Atoms are comprised of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Since they are neutrons, we'll ignore them. Things want balance. If you have a lump of dirt that has more protons than electrons, they need electrons for ?balance?. Don't care right?
It gets better because that is exactly how our planet is. The sun fires out a gazillion electrons every second and they hit the earth and still there is never enough to balance out the molecules on our planet. The dirt always needs more. This is opportunity knocking. Now that we have learned to generate power, We can bump electrons free of their orbits. They also look for balance. They want protons. (Sounds like a singles bar)
Getting back to boating... as our alternators, gauges, pumps, lights, etc. look useful without ground, they just won't work as we need that attraction to actually move electrons to protons. Kinda like a tree having a root system that you don't see just as big as the branches that you do see.
If you need an analogy, we can use water. A 1 metre pipe supplying water into a .5 metre pipe just won't work. You want unity. 1 to 1 makes sense. If you have a 12 gauge wire feeding something, sure as sh** you need 12 gauge on the other side or bigger, or else bad things happen. Go ahead and throw a 20 gauge ground wire on a 12 gauge circuit and pound the transfer through. For a while the poor skinny wire will try to move all the electrons along... works up a sweat, turns red, starts to burn and peel, and finally collapses. ?Holy Crap Honey! I smell smoke.? Hope you get the picture. A corroded connection works just as well as a small wire. You want all of your connections to be able to say ?nothing to see here... move along?
Somewhere, someone is thinking ?Hey wait... you are suggesting that electricity moves negative to Positive... Yup!
Conventional current flow, VS. electron flow. It's a mind twister.
Never ever ignore your ground connections. It'll save you a world of grief every time. Kinda like a life jacket...
One more thing for the audio guys. When I was young (dating myself here) the neg. of our speakers were grounded to the car body. Worked great! However, someone somewhere decided to ?float the internal ground of a radio in order to achieve more ?wattage out?. The moment that happened, if you tried to marry the grounds together, your radio would blow. The radio system just wasn?t equipped to handle the current flow of the entire car inside a little radio circuit... kinda like a flood because the banks weren't high enough. Now days, floating grounds are common place. Keep that in mind.
