Tagged Questions
3
votes
0answers
39 views
Nature of electricity [duplicate]
Suppose a lightning strikes and there is an iron rod and a coconut tree. How does the electricity know that rod is the least resistant path before hand.
4
votes
2answers
199 views
How does lightning “know” where to go?
If lightning comes down in, say, a large flat field with a lightning rod sticking out of the middle, the lightning will strike the rod.
How does it "know" the rod is there?
Will it always strike the ...
2
votes
2answers
82 views
Lightning driven electrolysis
Could a lightning bolt be harnessed to perform electrolysis, would a useful amount of hydrogen be produced?
I'm imagining some industrial scale device in the ocean with some hydrogen capture ...
11
votes
2answers
656 views
Does Fire Conduct Electricity? Why?
Recently, I have stumbled upon a YouTube video by Veritasium describing the conductivity of fire. My question is: how exactly does fire conduct electricity? I am a high school student; therefore ...
2
votes
1answer
615 views
Can Gases conduct Electricity?
Liquid electrolytes ionize and hence a current can pass through them. So if a gas can ionize, can it conduct electricity too? If so, what are a few such gases?
1
vote
1answer
115 views
Loopy lightning
What causes lightning to follow the path it does ?
picture from BBC news: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/62891000/jpg/_62891901_untitled-1copy.jpg main page: ...
3
votes
5answers
917 views
Can the lightning be captured and used as power source?
I would like to update my knowledge in this area, that is really out-of-dated and stopped somewhere like ten years ago.
I asked the very same question on my physics lecture at my studies and got the ...
16
votes
1answer
532 views
Can lightning be used to solve NP-complete problems?
I'm a MS/BS computer science guy who is wondering about why lightning can't (or can?) be used to solve NP complete problems efficiently, but I don't understand the physics behind lightning, so I'm ...
2
votes
1answer
334 views
Can energy be extracted from clouds?
Can cloud charge imbalance be used as an energy source?
First off quite some energy must be present in clouds: a lightning path is quite long, and electrical breakdown of air requires about 1MV/m. ...
1
vote
1answer
4k views
How much energy is in a lightning strike?
According to Wikipedia an average lightning has 1TW, the whole world used 16TW in 2006. (I suppose this means the same as 16TWh in one year?) Sometimes the lightning reaches 100kA. This peak last for ...
4
votes
2answers
295 views
Algorithm of Lightning Strikes?
Given an array of charge for a given area (2D or 3D), what algorithm would describe the path that lightning takes?
An example algorithm would be from the highest charge of the cloud, find the lowest ...
