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None. Regular 110 volt Ac power changes polarity sixty times a second. Hooking the two wires differently won't change a thing. Some electronic equipment needs to know which side is neutral and power and will not work with the polarity reversed. These are pretty rare, though.

Actually, there IS a risk with that.

While A/C power does change polarity, and the lamp will work either way, reversing the lamp's wiring WOULD DEFEAT THE SAFETY PURPOSE of the lamp's polarized plug.

I'm assuming you have a fairly modern lamp that came with a polarized plug on the cord, with one blade wider than the other. If you reverse the wiring, the wires in the lamp would be connected to the wrong slots in the wall socket - and there would be a higher risk of electric shock for anyone turning on the lamp, changing its bulb, touching the frame of the lampshade etc.

Most modern homes have polarized outlets, where one slot (the white-wire "neutral" connection) is larger than the other. The reason for this is so a lamp or appliance manufacturer can be sure which wire in their device gets connected to which wire in your house.

Inside your lamp's socket, the two separate wires in the cord are attached to two different screws. One is at the center connection on the socket, which connects to the bottom of the bulb. The other wire is attached to the outer shell of the socket, where the bulb screws in... this wire should be connected to the white ("grounded") wire in your home. To ensure this, polarization is used. This is a safety feature because sometimes a lamp wire becomes loose or the socket gets old and worn. If the wire somehow touches the exposed socket metal, you want it to be correctly plugged into the white "neutral" wire in your home, since the white wire is grounded at the fuse box. This could save you from a nasty shock.

If the wires are reversed, then the "hot" wire in a lamp might be the one that would touch exposed metal and you could become the path to ground while turning on the lamp, resulting in a serious shock.

A polarized plug makes sure you plug the lamp in the right way, assuming someone has wired your home correctly (with the white wire going to the silver screw on the outlets). If your lamp has an older non-polarized plug (where both blades are the same width), then the safety feature doesn't apply because you could plug it in either way. You can fix this by purchasing a polarized replacement plug for $2. at a hardware store. On a polarized plug, the larger blade is connected to the wire that has the "ribbed" insulation.

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Q: What is the risk with reversing the wiring on a two wire lamp?
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