Lightning strikes...but why here?

[richard]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/blast-what-happened-next/2006/08/1
6/1155407866380.html

The city is full of buildings with big juicy lightning rods giving a
virtual no-resistance path to earth, and yet this bolt opts for a
conductor insulated from earth/sea by a (presumably) non-metal hull.

While on this topic, are you safer under the tree - where you might share
a bolt - or out in the open, where you might get the whole thing? My
guess is, a distance of say 10 metres from the tree. You and the tree
are more or less equidistant from the source, but it would offer a better
path to ground - and you're too far from the tree to draw an arc.

 

[Stanislaw Flatto]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/blast-what-happened-next/2006/08/1
6/1155407866380.html

The city is full of buildings with big juicy lightning rods giving a
virtual no-resistance path to earth, and yet this bolt opts for a
conductor insulated from earth/sea by a (presumably) non-metal hull.

While on this topic, are you safer under the tree - where you might share
a bolt - or out in the open, where you might get the whole thing? My
guess is, a distance of say 10 metres from the tree. You and the tree
are more or less equidistant from the source, but it would offer a better
path to ground - and you're too far from the tree to draw an arc.

Two answers.
The first is engineering - logical. Depends on your "logic"/knowledge.
The second is "statistical". No matter what the actual result is, you
are still someplace under the "universal" Gaussian curve.
So chose wisely.

Have fun

Stanislaw
Slack user from Ulladulla.

 

[w_tom]

To answer any of your questions, first appreciate the big picture.
Lightning is an electrical connection from cloud to earthborne charges
maybe four miles distant. Will lightning take a five mile path
diagonally to those charges? Of course not. Shortest electrical path
is three miles down to tree, then four miles through earth to those
charges.

If standing on earth with feet apart, then a shorter electrical path
is up left leg and down right. Harmed human because human connection
to earth was not a single point. This is why people beneath a tree can
be harmed. This is also why four legged animals are so easily harmed
by what was only considered a nearby strike to a distant tree.

Lightning rods on buildings have a typically 60 degree cone of
protection. Lightning rods would not make lightning more attracted to
buildings compared to a boat (that is not inside that 60 degree cone).
Why would lightning strike the boat? Which direction were the
earthborne charges? What was the electrically shortest path to those
charges?

Single point ground is also why buildings can suffer direct lightning
strikes and not suffer damage to interior electronics. That connection
to a single point also how boats are wired so that direct lightning
strikes to a mast does not cause electronics damage.
http://www.thomson.ece.ufl.edu/lightning/

 

[jasen]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/blast-what-happened-next/2006/08/1
6/1155407866380.html

The city is full of buildings with big juicy lightning rods giving a
virtual no-resistance path to earth, and yet this bolt opts for a
conductor insulated from earth/sea by a (presumably) non-metal hull.

While on this topic, are you safer under the tree - where you might share
a bolt - or out in the open, where you might get the whole thing? My
guess is, a distance of say 10 metres from the tree. You and the tree
are more or less equidistant from the source, but it would offer a better
path to ground - and you're too far from the tree to draw an arc.

Beside the tree with the tree rising about 60 degrees above the horizon
squatting on one foot.