You could have a short or it could just be that you are reading through a load. Take a lamp and check for continuity at the plug, with a bulb in the lamp you will get continuity, take the bulb out if you still have continuity then you have a short in the wire or the lamp. Same thing happens in the wiring of your house on a larger scale.
If the electrical box is grounded, check with a tester, the "hot" wire will have a voltage to the the grounded box the neutral wire will not. If the box is not grounded, with the breaker supplying the voltage turned off, use a tester on the resistance scale to check for continuity between the wires and a cold water pipe or some other grounded medium. The neutral will have continuity between the wire and a ground the "hot" wire will not.
An electrical circuit forms a loop. The "live" or hot wire supplies the voltage, which is returned on the neutral. If the hot wire and neutral wire were connected together without a load between them, the circuit would be short out and trip the circuit's protection device.
The white is neutral. The house does have a neutral wire even though it may be black. One of those black wires is the neutral and the other is the hot wire. You will have to determine which is hot and which is neutral. You can easily do this with a voltage tester. The wire that lights the tester is the hot. When you wire the light simply wire the hot to hot, and the white and green to the other wire.
Brown = Hot Blue = Neutral Yellow/Green = Ground
Black red and yellow is three-phase. there is no neutral.
If the electrical box is grounded, check with a tester, the "hot" wire will have a voltage to the the grounded box the neutral wire will not. If the box is not grounded, with the breaker supplying the voltage turned off, use a tester on the resistance scale to check for continuity between the wires and a cold water pipe or some other grounded medium. The neutral will have continuity between the wire and a ground the "hot" wire will not.
Typical home wiring will have one hot wire, one neutral wire, and one ground wire per circuit. An open neutral would indicate that the neutral wire, usually white wire, is broken.
If wired properly the ridged wire is the neutral.
An electrical circuit forms a loop. The "live" or hot wire supplies the voltage, which is returned on the neutral. If the hot wire and neutral wire were connected together without a load between them, the circuit would be short out and trip the circuit's protection device.
The white is neutral. The house does have a neutral wire even though it may be black. One of those black wires is the neutral and the other is the hot wire. You will have to determine which is hot and which is neutral. You can easily do this with a voltage tester. The wire that lights the tester is the hot. When you wire the light simply wire the hot to hot, and the white and green to the other wire.
If this is a home wiring question and the wires are black and white then black is Hot and white is Neutral. If you also have a red wire, it is the other hot wire, and either the black or the red wire to the white one would be 120 volts, and red to black would be 240 volts.
Brown = Hot Blue = Neutral Yellow/Green = Ground
If a "hot" wire contacts the "neutral" or ground wire, electrical current flows to the ground.
Red is hot Green is ground White is neutral
Black red and yellow is three-phase. there is no neutral.
so you don't get shocked
In ordinary circumstances, a red wire is a secondary hot wire in an AC circuit, or the positive power leg in a DC circuit. Red should not be used as a neutral. If it is used for something other than a hot wire it must be labeled on the wire at all connection points- and would STILL be a bad idea.