SWG Tales

Isnt that like bad for the plane?

I am no expert, but I assume several things...

The plane is most likely made of a conductive metal like aluminum. Hopefully, it can conduct the charge uninterrupted on the skin of the plane without causing to much damage. Lightning also has an interesting characteristic of jumping from point to point instead of going directly through something. If you see victims of lightning strikes, often times their clothes are shredded in almost a straight line, as the lightning struck their skull, then the shoulder, then the elbow, wrist, so on...


Secondly, people in an aircraft are protected the same way as people in a car. I forget the name of the concept, but it's called a "something" cage. Lightning won't go INSIDE the cockpit because of that characteristic that makes lightning bounce on the surface of things instead of travelling through. The electronic systems, on the other hand, might be affected...but I would also assume that they are very well protected and insulated as I am sure aircraft designers counted on lightning striking a plane.

Edited to say: I love google. It's called a Faraday Cage. Check Wikipaedia's web pages for a description of the cage and the physics concepts on why it works.

Too bad there's no audio, I love listening to Japanses people yell and scream.

Jabe

*screams* HAAAAAAAAAA!

planes are EXCELLENT conductors of lightening

put a metal plane close to where the electricity is and WHAMMO!

i've never been hit (just jinxed myself there) but I've seen what happens when it does...

Krusshyk wrote:Edited to say: I love google. It's called a Faraday Cage. Check Wikipaedia's web pages for a description of the cage and the physics concepts on why it works.

I actually saw this at the Boston Science Museum. They had those big lightning bolt shooters in there and this lady in a cage. She kept letting her cage get zapped and was touching the inside as it happened. Pretty neat stuff.

Edit: Check it out here http://www.mos.org/sln/toe/

My physics teacher in high school had some kind of electric field generator in the classroom for a demonstration. I am not sure what the apparatus was called, but it generated some kind of electrical field that if you got close enough, it would zap the shit out of the closest part of your body. Not hard enough to injure you, but it hurt so much that he offered 5 bucks to the first person who would get close enough to get shocked.

Apparently they are called Tesla Coils and were invented by this guy named Tesla. (I know shocking, pun intended) I believe it was at Westinghouse near Boston. That is where the ones in the Boston Museum came from. (They spent time at MIT too)

Anyway he wanted to put them all over the US to send electricity without wires. So instead of poles with wire strung we'd have pole firing lightning everywhere. His idea never caught on for some reason.

Now the shocking thing that you experienced is so much more interesting when you are drunk. When I was but a private at FT Gordon, GA we decided to get drunk and travel along the riverwalk in Augusta GA. There happens to be a science museum there as well. Now five drunken GI's checking out a Science museum is a sight to behold.

We ran into our platoon guide (In training you have a leader that is one of your peers referred to as a platoon guide) So we locked this poor female private in some king of puzzle cage that could only be opened from the outside and moved on. We took a good five minutes trying to get it open mind you. Then I ran into my first Tesla coil. They had all kinds of nifty devices there that you could hold up to it to se different electrical patterns arc to. I thought is was more interesting to hold my hands out towards it and yell to my buddies "hey look, I'm the emporer" as the arcing electricity ran into my fingers. The story goes downhill from here and I'll save the rest for another off topic post =)

or what's even cooler, a lil device called a jacobs ladder...it was in all the old b/w horror movies where there was a mad scientist lair

looks like a big wire "V" and an electric arc runs from the bottom to the tips of the "V"

now what real FUN is to spread the V far apart so it won't arc, THEN a person grabs one end of the V, he grabs his friends hand, he grabs the next guy, a daisy chain it around until a guy finally grabs the other v..the charge starts to build through everyone's bodies, until someone breaks their hands apart, and THAT's where it arcs and shocks em...

so whoever broke it, is now kicked out of the chain, and the remaining people go again, except now the charge is higher than before since there's less people to disappate it...people keep getting booted until you're down to the last 2 people, where basically they both lose because they both let go as soon as its turned on...

fun stuff, always made it to the last two people...some teachers are the coolest!

Wow. Sounds like the guys that used to see who could hold on to the grounding rods from 2 seperate comm shelters the longest.