Could you run an appliance by connecting one prong directly to ground and other to hot wire in a receptacle?

Theoretically don't you just need a hot wire and ground to complete a circuit for an appliance to work?|||Yes.


The ground in your breaker box should be directly connected to the Earth via a metal stake in the ground, so if you connect directly to the ground, rather then thru the recepticle, it should be equivalent and run appliances just fine. You do have to make a good connection to ground. Just laying a wire on the ground probably wouldn't work very well because of excess contact resistance.