I bought a plug wire..it looks simple and has two prongs and two wires. One of the wires are black and one of the wires are white...how do you know which one is nuetral and which one is ground..


And I will be connecting this to a transformer..the transformer I have has a center tap wire, but the circuit schematic I'm looking at doesn't have a center tap..so should I just not use the center tap wire?

 

Hello,

On a transformer the black and white are normaly connected to the outer connections.
If it is correct the voltage is written on the transformer or on its label.

Greetings,
Bertus

 

And I will be connecting this to a transformer..the transformer I have has a center tap wire, but the circuit schematic I'm looking at doesn't have a center tap..so should I just not use the center tap wire?

Just tape the centre tap wire safely to the side of the transformer bobbin. Don't cut it short in case you one day want it for something else.

Connect the black and white wires to the outer terminals/ wires of the transformer,a s Bertus said.

If you are using a bridge rectifier it doesn't matter which way round they go as the bridge isolates the transformer from the zero volt line in the rest of the circuit.

If you are using a single rectifier to feed say a capacitor input to a switched mode power supply connect the black wire to the side which will be the zero line. Then connect the white wire to the rectifier side.