Whats the difference between electric grounding and bonding?

Question

Whats the difference between electric grounding and bonding?

Answer 1

if you take a cable tray as an example, bonding would be the connection from one tray to the next, earthing would be a cable attached to the tray which went to an earth bar or an earth rod, but the bonding is part of the earthing system.

Answer 2

Grounding and bonding are frequently confused.

Grounding is the act of connecting something to the ground (earth), so it has zero electrical potential. Everything that is grounded is connected to ground and can have no electrical energy stored in it.

Bonding is simply the act of joining two electrical conductors together. They may be two wires, a wire and a pipe, or they may be two tin cans. Bonding ensures that these two things will be at the same electrical potential. That means you won't get electricity building up in one and not in the other. No current flow can take place between two bonded bodies because they have the same potential. A wire between two electrical outlet boxes bonds them. If a hot (black) wire touches one box, both boxes will have 120 volts of electrical potential and either could give you a shock.

Bonding, itself, doesn't protect anything. However, if one of those boxes is grounded, there can be no electrical energy buildup. If the grounded box is bonded to the other box, the other box is also at zero electrical potential.

People often mix the terms; grounding and bonding. Whether it's a grounding or bonding connection, the goal in house wiring is to have no metal boxes or any other conductive materials near the wires become electrically hot. We want all these to be grounded so they have zero electrical potential and can't give us a shock.