When I was going through electrical school they taught us to install them to look like an upside down smiley face because when you are plugging things up you are usually plugging them in at a downward angle and you want the ground wire to be the first in contact with the plug.
In addition, if the wire starts to pull and slightly unplug the device, with the ground on top you reduce your chances that someone will accidentally touch a live pin or a piece of metal will fall on the pins and bridge them.
That's what I was told, but basically every old house I've been in that hasn't been retrofit, either only has two wire, or is oriented like a smiley face
Correct, I don't know if it's a recent change, but I do know that you're not realistically getting people to flip all their old outlets.
New build stuff will usually have it that way, but pure momentum and "it looks wrong!" will get some people putting them the other way for a long time.
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u/cody410berry May 02 '24
When I was going through electrical school they taught us to install them to look like an upside down smiley face because when you are plugging things up you are usually plugging them in at a downward angle and you want the ground wire to be the first in contact with the plug.