1) Earthing: All exposed metal is joined together and connected to the earth bar, which is

then connected to the neutral bar via what is called the 'MEN' link. In the event of an
active wire coming loose, it shorts to earth and either blows a fuse or trips a circuit
breaker due to the extremely high current involved.

When the circuit doesn't work, people have to come and find the problem and fix it. That
way we don't have any exposed live metal laying around for any length of time. We have
earthing to reduce the risk of fire or electrocution.

The earth path should have a resistance of less than 2 ohms. In some cases it's less than
0.5 ohms, and then there's also fault-loop-impedance to worry about too.

These things vary from country to country and in my country should only be looked at by
a qualified electrician, since getting it wrong increases the risk of killing people.

2) earthing is basically the same thing as grounding ...

when power is generated, one "leg" or "side" of the generating coils are made to go "hot"
while the other side of the coils or legs are called the neutral wires... whilst the generator
is producing power the hot leg first runs positive and then runs negative in a sine wave
pattern... that happens 50 or 60 times a second, depending in which country the power is
being generated... no matter in which direction the sine wave is going the electrons can
only ever flow from the hot to the neutral side of the generating coils... once power is
transmitted, especially single phase, that is why there is normally only one hot leg or "hot
line" that transmits power while the other leg is the neutral...

they use transformers to reduce the transmitted power from a very high voltage - like
415,000 Volts - to voltages you can safely use in your home, which are only 240 Volts
and 120 Volts ... it is done using transformers and those transformers will also have coils
- different to the ones in generators - that have two hot connections and a center tap
connection... at all times the center tap on the transformer is the neutral and that neutral is
usually - but not always - grounded to the earth... whenever one hot goes "+" or "Plus"
120 Volts the other hot goes "-" or "Minus" 120 Volts... so between the two hots you can
see there is 120 + 120 = 240 Volts whilst between any hot wire and the neutral wire there
is only ever "+" or "-" 120 Volts maximum... all of these lines come into your electrical
distribution box which will also have its own earth or ground wire and that is connected
to the ground wire coming into your home... there are many complex ways to transmit
electricity and use earths and ground connections.. there are different power systems such
as single phase or three phase power...

dangers:Here are the dangers of earth systems. Electrical power is supplied to a site
through a two cored cable (active and neutral here). At the metering box all neutral leads
connect to a common neutral link, i.e. leads coming back from various power and light
circuits etc. Also connected to this neutral link is the earth wire leading to a bulk
connection of all other earth wires. A further earth wire leads off to the water service and,
in the case of more modern homes now, a separate earth stake driven into the ground.