Really he should start from the bottom and go upwards.
Lighting question: why is it that older houses tended to be made with lightning rods, but newer houses rarely if ever have them? (At least where I live, anyway.) Did it turn out that lightning rods didn’t really work anyway? Or are lightning strikes on houses so rare that it’s just not worthwhile? Or perhaps the construction of houses has changed such that it’s less of a risk than it was for older houses?
Do you have to fly kites with housekeys on the strings?
Thunder only happens when it’s raining.
Chicago’s favorite weatherman (and meteorological know-it-all) Tom Skilling has this to say about it:
There is no good reason why lightning rods (and the associated assembly consisting of a connection to earth and a ground rod) are not routinely added to houses. Perhaps it’s because the chance of a lightning strike is, for most houses, quite low. However, most high buildings and other structures do have some kind of lightning protection system incorporated into them.
A semi-serous answer is related to why many newly-built houses even now in 2021 have really pitiful thermal insulation in teh exterior walls & under the roofing.
As between $5K spent by the builder on a) lightning rods, b) more insulation, c) fancier appliances, flooring, & windows, which choice do you think sells more houses more quickly?
and is orange Tang still a thing?
I do not discuss Orange Tang.
It involves a large kite, a remote castle, and a senior researcher yelling “THROW THE SWITCH!!”
However, it is actually illegal for me to give any further details.
You are going to do just fine here.
We’ve evolved significantly.
During my PhD We’d launch rockets that were grounded with kevlar-coated copper wire in order to trigger lightning during thunderstorms.
Now I use a radio telescope (LOFAR) to make 3D images of the lightning
Ostensibly.
The copper in the wires (see above post) would burn up and give the initial stage of the lightning a greenish hue. Lightning on other planets certainly works very different, thus is a different color, due to the different atmosphere.
However, unless something weird is happening, I doubt the earth’s atmosphere varies enough to make any significant change to the color
Historically I haven’t really got along well with “thunder physicists”.
During my PhD we had some collaborators (who were known for not being very good experementalists, too may physicists and not enough engineers) try to study thunder by setting out an array of microphones at our lightning triggering site. Thunder is rarely studied for many reasons, one of which is that it is very hard because EVERYTHING can affect your measurement of the thunder. (how do you know that wall 100 m away isn’t causing reflections that your microphone picks up?), this group did not have the expertise to solve these issues.
Anywho, before wasting our time, this group had never even brought the microphones OUTSIDE before, nevertheless placed them in a thunderstorm. Their experiment had many problems, including regularly getting blown over. The funniest however was the fact they didn’t anticipate their microphones would get wet (???). Their eventual solution (AFTER discovering that rain is a thing) was to put on un-lubricated condoms on the microphones.
I made sure to always be busy when they came around asking for help.
During my PhD a research group (in China I think) randomly caught a ball lightning (what is the singular anyway?) with a spectrometer. Which, as you can imagine, was just stupidly good luck. Turns out it’s just burning dirt.
Thanks, this is at least a start.
Thanks!
My PhD did not add much to the field, I’ve fortunately become more productive since then.
However, one bit that is interesting. It turns out that lighting can emit intense bursts of gamma rays (TGF), which are now regularly detected by satellites .
During my PhD I was very lucky and recorded a rare downward-directed gamma ray burst, which turned out to be the most power TGF ever recorded (pretty sure, this isn’t SUPPER hard). Some simulations showed that the source region (at 3 km altitude, low in the thunderstorm) probably had lethal levels of radiation. The implication being that downward-directed gamma ray bursts (which are difficult to measure) could be far more intense than their upward-going cousins.
Does this mean gamma based super powers are also on the table?
The First Rule of Orange Tang is… well, you know.
Are you saying if I were flying a plane through a thunderstorm (which would likely be fatal anyway), and a downward event occurred close enough to the cockpit (like, how close?), I’d be a dead man flying?
Do you ever use the word " lightninging"?
Players only love you when they’re playing