system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: When electricity goes to ground, what actually happens to the electrons?
gpt
Sending an electron to ground is comparable to dropping a water droplet into the ocean. It becomes part of the global network but on its own it will have a minimal impact due to the vast size of our globe. Ideally you should be able to send as much current to ground as you want without ever changing the electrical potential. However in reality it is a bit more complex. Your ground wire have some resistance, inductance and capacitance and you might therefore see some transmission line effects when sinking currents into the ground. Similarly the ground itself is not an ideal conductor, in fact it can be a very poor conductor in a lot of cases, and you could in practice change the electrical potential of the local ground if you have enough current. This is something you might see around rail lines and during thunderstorms.