Darwin....?

[ComedyPilot]

I do not class myself as the most intelligent person in the world. However, I do know that thunderstorms and their ubiquitous ingredient 'lightning' can be a deadly mix.

I parked my car just as the storm blew in, and a few kids from my street played nearby. One of them said, 'I don't like thunder'. A harmless enough statement. They then proceeded to climb the tree up our road and swing around on a synthetic rope just AS A BOLT OF LIGHTNING struck about a mile away!!!!

By now I was in the house with the door shut, and the kids were stood round the tree excitedly pointing at the closing storm. As a kid, I was taught to get inside during thunderstorms, and not to climb trees as they can be struck by lightning. Obviously their parents don't offer that level of advice to them.

None of them got struck, but also none of them seem fazed or concerned about how close the lightning came.

I must be just a boring git.

 

[Mr Pig]

When I was a kid I liked sitting at the window watching the lightning, I think it's great. My mother was terrified of it though and used to hide in the corner of the room! Why she thought that was safer in the corner than it would be sitting on a chair I no not know.

She also made us switch off and unplug every electrical appliance in the house.

I like really, really bad weather. The stuff we usually get here lacks any real commitment and doesn't honestly qualify as weather at all!

 

[tdr1nka]

In the event of a lightening strike you are safest in a car, it being insulated from earth by the tyres or inside a fridge.

If I remember the Public Safety films of my youth kids were warned about the dangers of hiding in fridges.

 

[Mr Pig]

In the event of a lightening strike you are safest in a car, it being insulated from earth by the tyres

I think it's because the shell of the car forms a Faraday cage and the current flows over the outside of the cage to earth.

 

[Maz]

I think it's because the shell of the car forms a Faraday cage...

Only if it's a Voltswagon.

 

[Sh4rkyBloke]

Maaaaaz!!

 

[Renard]

Maaaaaz!!

Perhaps he should be put in a faraway cage

 

[Maz]

Perhaps he should be put in a faraway cage

Watt!

 

[swee'pea99]

I remember watching in fascination a bunch of kids who, having walked out across the ice to the middle of the lake, maybe 100m out, were doing their best to smash the ice with a big branch....

 

[Abitrary]

In the event of a lightening strike you are safest in a car, it being insulated from earth by the tyres or inside a fridge.

It's the most common misconception - usually with people with no understanding of physics or meteorology - that you can protect yourself from lightening like this.

There are myriad factors that influence this, positivisation of the atmosphere and what hemisphere you are in.

If you don't factor in all this, then sitting in a car is about as useful as sitting in a van der graaf generator.

 

[Black Sheep]

In the event of a lightening strike you are safest in a car, it being insulated from earth by the tyres.

so the electricity that can jump from thousands of feet up in the clouds can't jump half a foot from the car to the ground?

hmm.


modern cars have what is known as afaraday cage which ducts the electrical charge round the occupants to the ground, the current is still transmitted to the car, through the metal shell and to the ground and is safe, but not for the reason normally cited.

 

[Andy in Sig]

Watt!

Resistance is pointless.

(Subtle or what?)

 

[Fnaar]

Haven't you lot got Ohms to go to?

 

[alecstilleyedye]

Haven't you lot got Ohms to go to?

 

[Sh4rkyBloke]

Nice one, Fnaar. That was definitely the joule in the pun Crown.