[MP1]

Yes, I remember some of those strange Fords with the positive ground. It sure made confusion of a simple task like changing the battery.
  ;D

MP

 

[ante1]

The radio reception was not very good, only the strongest stations worked acceptable. Some time later he found a kind of converter or filter for the antenna wire which made it possible to ground the antenna in the car body to get a good ground plane. I never saw this gizmo so I don’t know what was in it but it worked perfectly. I still wonder how it was solved (changing the polarity of the antenna)? Maybe it’s very simple to solve, it was not expensive. ;D

 

[Dazza]

The old Volkswagon Beadle, had a positive ground as well.

 

[prateeksikka]

hi u all!
is there any experiment which can prove that the earth is positive with respect to the lower cloud on a rainy day?
or is it mere a convention?can we actually measure this?
;D

 

[ante1]

Hi prateek,

You will need a high voltage probe for your multimeter and I recommend rubber gloves! ;D
 
I think the polarity of the clouds towards ground (earth) must be considered as a dual power supply. Some are on positive side and others are on the negative side of earth potential. But that’s me thinking and I might be wrong!

Do we have any meteorologist in our community?

 

[audioguru2]

A neon bulb and a very high-value resistor will show you the polarity of static charges fairly safely. I think its negative internal post will light with a negative polarity on it, and it will breakdown at about 90V and prevent any higher voltage from occuring. ;D

 

[prateeksikka]

hi audioguru!
where can i connect this neon bulb and high value resistor.is there any method to measure the polarity using my lightening conductor.hey i guess i can measure the direction or current flow in the lightening current of my building but how?
through an electrolytic cap?
;D

 

[kid_kv]

HI, ALL

Hear is a link that might help out http://www.srh.weather.gov/srh/jetstream/lightning/positive.htm
this high voltage site is whear it came from and was posted in the high voltage stuff by Audioguru http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm#Disconnect ther is a 
pic of a lightening strike down the page

steven

 

[ante1]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for the whether link interesting reading and fantastic pictures, this confirms that there are both positive and negative lightning. Scary thing “300,000 amperes and one billion volts!”     for how long period would you need this to fully charge a car battery? ;D

 

[audioguru2]

I heard the thunder from positive lighning that zapped a kid on his bike near my home. He is very lucky to still be alive but is badly burned. It was sunny and the storm was far away. :'(

A car battery and everything near it would be vapourized with 300,000A and a billion volts! ;D

 

[prateeksikka]

first link sent by steven clears that lower cloud is -ve and ground is +ve.
so how come -ve lightening?
??? ???

 

[kid_kv]

HI, prateeksikka

this is the 1st link on the page and might help out http://plaza.ufl.edu/rakov/ICLP2000/positive1.16.pdf  ;D

To out run a lightening bolt you need to run at 60000 miles a second 

I have been trying to get a pic of a lightening bolt but they are toooooooo fast
steven

 

[ante1]

Hi Steven,

If you try to take pictures of a thunderstorm at night it’s easier, just let the shutter stay open and you can get several lightning bolts on the same pic. That is if your camera allows you to keep the shutter open continuously or for a longer fixed time interval sometimes 4 or 8 sec or even longer.  8) 
 

Audioguru, No of curse you can’t let all of that energy run straight into the accumulator!   You have to catch it first in a capacitor and then feed it through a resistor into the battery nice and easy!  ;D What size of cap (uF) do you figure it would take to store the energy from a lightning bolt? 8)

 

 

[f4cepl4nt]

Ok, I'm not sure if anyone said this yet, but here is how part of lightning works:

Whichever one is negative (the clouds or the ground, not quite sure) induces the opposite charge on the other thing. If that makes sense. Basically if the clouds are heavily negatively charged, when they pass over the earth they induce a strong positive charge on the surface. That makes the negatively charged ions in the clouds want to travel towards the earth. Then, once enough of those ions have accumulated, they go ahead and do that. Now as i said, it might be the other way around, I'm not quite sure, but this should give you a pretty good idea of how it works.

The only thing i never really looked at is HOW the charges get so great in the clouds/ground which then induce the charge on the other thing.

 

[Codyhtml]

for the cap size i'm thinking somthing around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000uf and a very hi voltage cap too what would that be like the size of my house  ;D or bigger
EDIT the cap size would probably be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

 

[ante1]

Yea, that agrees with my calculations too!  ;D

 

[audioguru2]

I would add a few more zero's. ;D