Yes, this has certainly revived an old thread. Everyone remember the water experiment as well? [Linked Image]

James,
You raise a good question there. Even if the spacing between conductors were exactly uniform throughout the cable, don't forget that we're talking about a coil of Romex in this case.

Once you wind the cable in this way you get not only the interaction of fields between the two conductors at any point along the run, but also between conductors in nearby turns of the coil. Thus you might have hot & neutral next to each other between adjacent turns at one point, but two hots or two neutrals next to each other where the winding direction changes.

The fields won't cancel out completely, so there will be a little measurable inductance.

Regarding coupling to the CPC (*), there will always be a little leakage anyway where we have one circuit conductor grounded and the other hot, due to capacitance in the cable.

(*) The term CPC that James used means Circuit Protective Conductor, equivalent to the EGC in America.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 02-18-2004).]