/diy/ - Do It Yourself

I assume this is /diy/'s version of the "ask a stupid question but don't make a thread" thread.

So two nights ago my dryer just stopped. I went and checked the breaker but it wasn't tripped, and today my landlord came to "look at it," but also brought another dryer. Said that sometimes it trips but you can't see that it has; Okay, fair enough.

We were both looking in the breaker box and all the breakers looked right but we flipped them just because really that was something I should have done anyway. Lo, the light inside the dryer came back on. So we were about to give up on hauling the "new" dryer inside and I called out "WELL I GUESS I'LL TURN IT ON AN SEE IF IT TRIPS THE BREAKER," and as soon as it started spinning, an electrical arc, about 6 inches long, shot out of the front of the dryer and the whole thing shut off and the breaker tripped. Spoopy stuff.

Landlord was like "What happened?" and I described that to him and he was very incredulous. So I told him to wait for me to reset the whole thing. Breaker, stand back, watch this. Another electrical arc like 8 inches long. Louder. POP.

"Well that's the damnedest thing..." I guess I gotta ask somebody about this.

Landlord just got in contact with me and said that his guy said "Sounds like a ground wire."

I don't know anything about electricity except to turn it off before doing anything to plugs. Does that sound "like a ground wire?"

Any permutation of words I've used to describe the electrical arcing that I might put into a search engine brings back "So, your plug is arcing." No, not my plug you stupid algorithm, it shot out of the front of the dryer right about here.

Anyway, Landlord says I can't have another dryer until he gets a guy to "come look at the ground."

Is that something that a loose/corroded/whatevered ground wire can cause? The front of the machine going all kamahamaha?