But just for fun, let’s assume that bag actually has popcorn kernels in it, and that they’re being kept fresh and dry somehow. Is there any chance that if lightning strikes the kernels will pop?
I say definitely not. I just don’t think it’s that simple. My uneducated guess is there’d be too much heat and the kernels would just burn. Or nothing would happen at all because the energy is just directed into the ground by the rod (does a lightning rod even get hot when struck)? I really don’t know much about lightning or electricity or popcorn though.
P.S. Mods, feel free to move to IMHO or whatever if you don’t think this is a GQ.
P.P.S. If you’re Canadian, and you don’t mind giving Cineplex an email address, I think you can get a free small popcorn.
Hm, interesting question. Popcorn pops when it gets hot enough to cause the water inside the kernel to boil into steam. Lightning can produce temperatures hot enough to melt sand, so obviously it’s plenty hot enough to boil the water. It’s also hot enough to vaporize the kernels, either before or after they’ve popped. It’s also possible that there will be a temperature gradient, affecting kernels closest to the lightning rod differently than the ones farther away. It’s all going to come down to how long the kernels are heated and to what temperature. I’m guessing that the event is too fast to actually cause any popping. The kernels might be vaporized or might be burnt, but they won’t be heated at the right temperature long enough to actually pop.
I know that when lightning hits trees, the sap can flash into steam and make the tree explode, blowing off limbs or splitting the tree.
I think popping the popcorn is possible, but I think it’s also possible that the kernels will just get scorched and blasted into non-popcorn-ish chunks.
My guess is that it’d pop and burn. And the heat differentials would probably be steep enough that you’d get a lot of kernels that were popped and burned on one side, and not popped at all on the other.
It might pop the corn, but you wouldn’t get popcorn. The pop is just the last step in the process, when the hull ruptures. The insides still need time to cook.
The Mythbusters tested fast-popping popcorn. I believe that they used explosives of some form (naturally), but the popcorn didn’t pop and their expert said that you need to slowly raise the temperature so that the endosperm of the kernel gelatinizes and then expands to rupture the shell, cooling to form the white fluffy stuff.
Think of it like flashing a great heat at an ice cube, with a goal of turning all of it into 90% liquid and 10% gas. A low burst isn’t going to do much. You’ll get 99% ice and 1% water. A high burst might vaporize most of the ice, but very little of it will turn to water - say 50% ice, 1% water, 49% gas. Without a slow, applied heat, you’re just not going to achieve the goal.
The only chance that I see for the popcorn to pop is if somehow the lightning strike hits a piece of metal, superheats it, and that falls into the kernels to slowly heat some of them.
Well, let’s assume the bag has a lightning rod down the middle of it, and the kernels are then poured in so that the rod runs right down through all the kernels.
A quick Google led me to this, which leads me to believe the rod will heat up when struck. So if the rod gets hot enough, maybe we would see some popping?
I just can’t imagine a lightning strike followed by an explosion of puffy white delicious popcorn though.
