Lightning Rods

[iviv]

Right, I've just gotten into a debate with a friend over how lightning rods work, and I got bored arguing, so want you lot to do it for me (May as well be blunt )

I didn't know too much about lightning rods before this started, I thought they simply attracted lightning strikes so they hit the rod, and didn't hit other things such as buildings. But from what I can now tell, they don't exactly attract it, just the lightning looks for the lowest resistance to ground, which is the lightning rod, so it strikes there and goes into ground, job done. However, she's saying that:

What happens is the dense electric field around the tip of the rod wards lighting away from the immediate area. It doesn't provide a low resistance path to the ground because if the lightning rod works right, it prevents the lightning from striking at all!

So... any takers for either side? Using the theory that the simplest solution is often the best, I claim that I'm right, but am I?

Thanks

 

[iviv]

Well, the argument has just veered off on the difference between a lightning rod and a lightning conductor.

http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lhm/lpts.html

From that site, I can kinda see what she's saying:

2. Ground-based objects (fences, trees, blades of grass, corners of buildings, people, lightning rods, etc., etc.) emit varying degrees of electric activity during this event. Upward Streamers are launched from some of these objects. A few tens of meters off the ground, a "collection zone" is established according to the intensified local electrical field.

That part may be what she's talking about, but still, after that the lightning takes the path of lowest resistance.

Also, she seems to be basing her entire argument on a class demonstration where:

my professor had a lightning generator and a lighting rod and showed us what happened when you had the generator on and put the rod near the generator.

And this 'lightning rod' was just in his hand, not directly grounded or anything.

She doesn't seem to see to understand this wasn't a very good demonstration, at least in my eyes :3