One important thing about electricity is the plugs and wires, and when you need to repair them, you might notice that the different coloured wires are inside a plug.
The power that comes from the national grid is the main power supply; the current of the mains is an alternating current with around 240 volts flowing into households.
Keep in mind that the voltage may differ between which goes into our sockets in our homes.
Three wires are in a plug: the live one, the grounded or earth wire and the neutral one, all with an insulating plastic covering the copper wires.
Now, the way we differentiate the wires so that we don't shock ourselves is through the colours. brown is live, meaning all the voltage flowing through the plug is going through the brown one and has a potential difference of 230 volts. The blue one is the neutral one that will complete the circuit.
And lastly is the earth or ground wire, which is a stripped green wire that stops the plug housing from becoming live and shocking us when we grab the plug.
It does this by giving the electricity an alternative output so that the power flows out instead of into the plug housing.
The reason why the electricity from the live wire (brown) flows through the neutral wire (blue) is that they have a 0 potential difference compared to the live wire, which has, in this case, 240 volts.
Now, since humans also have 0 potential difference, we can act as a neutral wire and get shocked by electricity, too. This is why sticking forks into plug sockets even when they are "off" can still shock you, and in general, sticking things into sockets is bad.
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