Some say that lightning can pass through glass windows. Othes are sceptical. JRG
Apologies for accidental deletion of this page. I have no idea how it happened, I can assure you it was not intentional. Sorry again. --/Mat 19:24, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Odd - someone else managed to change this page to a null entry (like I apparently did) - anyone know if this is a user-error, browser error, page-error or wiki error? --/Mat 15:34, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The ozone page says that lightning produces ozone. Has this ever been measured? JWSchmidt 05:20, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- "Researcher Renyi Zhang of Texas A&M University helped lead a study on the impact of lightning, and the results are surprising: Lightning can ... increase ozone levels as much as 30 percent in the free troposphere, the area that extends 3-8 miles above the Earth's surface. " - from EurekAlert.
- People have known that lightning produces ozone since the days of Benjamin Franklin, if not earlier. It was the fact that man-made electric discharges caused the same ozone smell as lightning that led Franklin to investigate the electrical causes of lightning. (Source: Ask A Scientist.)
I was under the impression that a lightning rod actually prevented lightning from striking, rather than providing a lower resistance conduction path. The idea is that the lightning rod allows charge to dissipate from the structure it is attached to, thus reducing the potential difference between the cloud and structure, reducing the chance of lightning striking that ___location... That said, I've also seen videos of lightning striking the tops of skyscrapers, so I'm not entirely confident this is their *only* purpose...
- There seem to be conflicting opinions about this. Benjamin Franklin believed that "the electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently, before it could come near enough to strike". He proved that some charge was extracted "silently" from thunderclouds by a lightning rod, but this is not the same as preventing a lightning strike. HowStuffWorks says that "Regardless of whether or not a lightning-rod system is present, the strike will still occur. ".
- Franklin's theory suggested that pointed rods were better because they caused a silent discharge and prevented lightning strikes, while British scientists believed that blunt rods were better because they induced strikes to occur where they could be safely conducted to ground. The debate became polarised for political reasons, with Americans supporting Franklin's view and the British clinging to the opposite view. I suspect that this rivalry continues today. I don't want to take sides here, but I note an article in USA Today entitled "Researchers find that blunt lightning rods work best". I wouldn't be surprised to find other articles supporting the opposite point of view. -- Heron 12:31, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The article comments on positive lightning: It occurs when the stepped leader forms at the positively charged cloud tops, with the consequence that a positively charged streamer issues from the ground. Shouldn't that read ... with the consequence that a negatively charged streamer issues from the negatively charged ground away from the cloud??? --Martin Rehker 13:00, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)