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Here's your homework for tonight: Get out your trusty old voltmeter, set it to the 200VAC range, and stick one probe into some moist earth in your yard, and the other probe into the hot spade socket of an electrical outlet (that's the right-hand side one of a 3-prong outlet when the round prong hole is on the bottom).

Cool, eh? Tell us what voltage you measured. I'll go out and do it here right now.. gimmeasec..

Here ya go. Red probe plugged into a single (hot) conductor of a 120VAC outlet, and black probe just stuck into the wet earth outside our house. You can read the meter voltage..