A ground connection is a variation of a prime mover.
And a prime mover is exterior to a circuit, yet connected to it, because prime movers supersede the devices they connect to.
I thought I would repost, over here, what I have posted at EEV Blog forum since it's a useful concept to keep in mind that may not have been taught to students of electrical engineering. In other words, it was overlooked in favor of simplistic definitions. Well, here is my more complicated version of a ground connection.
Everything you say about a circuit is true but a ground is not part of the circuit, remember? It is a reference for calculating voltage drop across the circuit which supersedes the circuit, because it's referring to something else which is located outside of the circuit yet connected to it, namely the ground.
Hence, a ground connection doesn't follow the rules of circuitry in which you have to have two points to create a flow of current. Instead, all you need is one.
This is the definition of a ground – a more expanded definition (which is predicated upon the consequences of the simpler version) of a definition of a ground which you have been taught, namely a ground is not internal to the circuit.
Think of it in the same context as a prime mover: something which is outside of the circuit yet is connected to it.
Being analogous to the location of a prime mover, it has its own rules which are not the rules of circuit construction.
In other words, according to artificial intelligence over at Google, an Earth ground provides for a return path to the prime mover, namely: the source. This makes a ground connection to Earth a back door (so to speak) and, thus, a partial clone of a prime mover (namely: another source)!
Google's AI definition of an electrical ground connection constituting (among other things) a "return path to a generic source". This does not necessitate a return to any specific source. This is where the limited scholastic training, among students of electrical engineering, has broken down!
https://tinyurl.com/zerobatt
https://tinyurl.com/zerovolts
Oh, and by the way, there's no such thing as a simple circuit that can take advantage of ground as a zero-voltage source of infinite amp-hours such as how simulators view a ground connection, because I have never in my life managed to make a DC version of an over-unity circuit.
They must always be an oscillating circuit in order to provide over unity because reactance has to be engaged in order to draw current from out of the ground using a reverse polarity of voltage concept, namely voltage pulling current instead of pushing it.
In other words, negative impedance.
You won't get this in a DC circuit. It has to be oscillating. Which makes it complicated!
The complication is in crafting a dipole from out of reactance to supplement for the lack of an adequate input from a standard prime mover.
This reactive dipole is what constitutes the pairing of extreme parameters, such as: possessing a very small resistance along with a very large resistance, plus very large inductances and capacitances, etc., as in the following example...
But it doesn't always need to be extremely enlarged capacitances or inductors. It could just as easily involve reactive parameters which are very small, such as: using 100 pico Farad capacitances, etc.
So, when some of the guys and gals over at EEV Blog have claimed that I am “breaking the simulator”, in actuality, I am breaking with conforming to conventional standards of crafting “stable norms of society” among electrical engineers in particular and the public at large in general.
What I've learned from this is that reactance is not rigid. It is more or less analogous to a rubber band in which it can be stretched or compressed with energetic consequences of similar character, namely: energy can become expanded or contracted (not created, nor destroyed) in a manner which is similar to the Ant-Man character in Marvel comics. This does not violate conservation since our measurement of energy is always predicated upon whatever reactance prevails at the moment which we take our measurement of energy.
In other words, reactance alters our perception of energetic reality. It's not the energy which has become altered. It is our perception of energy which has become altered.
This is also analogous to the last scene of the Will Smith movie entitled, “Men in Black” (part one), in which we view our galaxy as being a tiny corpuscle within a much larger galaxy which, in turn, is contained within another larger galaxy, and these cascading structures are left to the viewer as being without any clear limitation as to how far does it proceed upwards, or downwards, in scale.
This thought is repeated by the sage, Vasishtha, in which he states (more or less), “when we wake up (become enlightened) from our present reality, we are waking up into another reality. Each reality appears to be real while we're in it. Yet, from a point of view which is located in the next reality which supersedes the present version, our present reality appears to be an illusory dream of insubstantial character.”