h a l f b a k e r y
Strap *this* to the back of your cat.
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The danger of lightning quickly become apparent if you live in a place like Florida where a single afternoon storm can produce hundreds or strikes per hour. While it's true that ligtning rods offer some protection for the places that can afford them, most homeowners just take their chances. A lot of
good TV's, computers and radios get lost in this lottery. It seems like government could provide a public service by using some of our tax dollars to create towers (similar to power poles or radio station antenae) whose function would simply be to build and hold a substantial store of negatively charged particles when a storm was approaching. The towers would in effect become active lightning rods instead of the passive ones we have now. If they cut down the number of random placed strikes by even 10 percent they'd be worth it. In addition to saving property it would could cut down the number of people who get hit by lightning here. (At least 7 people got hit here last month alone.)
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sound like it would be really cool to watch. |
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i know not much about catching lightning,
but is it possible for them to power
themselves by using the energy of the
lightning? |
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Isn't this Baked in the form of cell phone towers? |
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I don't entirely understand. You would charge earth-side to avoid polarisation? If you increase ionisation of earth-side substantially, you would get more activity. |
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The point of lightning rods is to provide an easier escape rute for the charge that is there naturally. Adding to it would decrease the equilibrium effect of every lightning strike on the environment, producing more lightning strikes, not necessarily all on your towers. |
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[Zus], you mean in addition to the second "s" in "missing"? |
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While I would agree that "the point of lightning rods is to provide an easier ... rute (sic) for the charge" to the ground, I don't see how adding grounded towers in the proximity of or attached to existing structures is going to produce or attract additional lightning strikes to other nearby unprotected sites. Do you have a reference source for that assertion? |
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I doubt (although I might be wrong) that you could artificially keep in reserve and immediately deploy this to the extent that it outweighs the growth of natural step leaders that would occur in a thunderstorm. The step leaders might seem to be random, but they don't form immediately, instead 'growing' and adding to each other until the logical path is undeniably right for a discharge to flow down. The atmospheric resources that built these step leaders are likely to completely dwarf your own efforts, and if not, they'll at least compete with them. |
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Isn't this what churches are for? |
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You don't need to induce a charge in a lighting rod. That's done by the passing cloud (as with Benjamin Franklin's kite). The pointed metal rod then concentrates the electric field at the tip. Get to breakdown voltage, and up it goes.
"Dissipater rods" (Early Streamer Emission, or ESE) supposedly reduce the chance of lightning strikes. |
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Ian Tindale presents a valid point. I do not think that ionised rods would have the inviting effect that would outweigh the natural path of the lightning, at least not significantly more than the ordinary grounded rods. |
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About the charge in the rods, I only just noticed that the author is talking about negatively charging them, which would in fact reduce polarisation (probably not significantly, but still). But from the context of the authors post, I conclude he is talking about making lightning rods that actively try to establish a channel for equalisation (lightning) of electrical charge. This definitely not going to happen with negative ionisation of the rods, since the negative charge would compell the channel to be generated somewhere else (where there is a larger positive ionisation, for instance). |
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That's a point. If you want to synthesize some sort of artificial streamer, you want it to be a positive streamer. Positive streamers reach upward until they meet the step leaders, and when they eventually form a viable path, the lightning runs through it. There'll be many step leaders, and there'll be many positive streamers at any one time, forming as if there were 'faults' in the atmosphere, between the bottom of the clouds heading toward the ground (the step leaders) and forming from ground-based objects upwards (the positive streamers) as the positive ionisation is pushed towards the ground, often overloading objects (or animals) actually on the ground. |
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Okay, positively charged attractors it is then, if that would make the streamers act as the draw this idea intends them to be. |
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Speaking of cell phone towers, everyone hates having them in their neighborhood but if they could somehow be converted into lightning attractors without electrical arcing destroying the equipment then maybe they'd be seen in a different light. People might start saying build more, build more (and could you make them look like really really tall trees while you're at it). |
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I heard that lightning never strikes twice. I guess this is because the first place isn't there any more.
But if it is, there should be a good trade on ebay in second hand antenna that have been previously struck, and therefore cannot ever be struck again.
But I may be wrong on one or two of the above points. |
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