Lightning Rods

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iviv

Soldato
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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!
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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 :)
 
Yes you are right, the lightning rod is simply an earth connection so all the electricity goes down the attached cable into the ground and not the building. Her explanation sounds like some sort of defence weapon from a red alert game.
 
I can just picture in my head, someone creating a lightning rod and then hooking it up to a high voltage wire to create a "dense electric field", which then causes an arc from the lightning rod to the person. This is all surrounded by a big black boarder, titled "your doing it wrong"
 
If i was you, i'd print this webpage and push it in her face...admittedly you lose kudos as you asked your "online friends" from a "computer forum" but pfft, she loses!
 
Tell her that water is actually a gas whilst it is in pipes and only turns to liquid when it hits the air, she might believe you.
 
This one must be broken:

lightNYDN1805_468x339.jpg


:p

Having seen a few lightning rod strikes (not quite as impressive, however).....they are designed to attract the lightning.

Anyway, I think what's she's thinking of is this, in some cockeyed, incorrect, form:

Nikola Tesla's U.S. Patent 1,266,175 was an improvement in lightning protectors. The patent was granted due to a fault in Franklin's original theory of operation; the pointed lightning rod actually ionizes the air around itself, rendering the air conductive, which in turn raises the probability of a strike. Many years after receiving his patent, in 1919 Dr. Tesla wrote an article for The Electrical Experimenter entitled "Famous Scientific Illusions", in which he explains the logic of Franklin's pointed lightning rod and discloses his improved method and apparatus.
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Maybe that'll help clear it up.
 
Dist said:
I can just picture in my head, someone creating a lightning rod and then hooking it up to a high voltage wire to create a "dense electric field", which then causes an arc from the lightning rod to the person. This is all surrounded by a big black boarder, titled "your doing it wrong"
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LOL to this btw :p
 
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.
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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.
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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
 
Hehehe, reminds me of the argument I once had with a mates wife over her insistance that Nasa have a room they can suck all the air out of to turn off mavity.

iviv: 1
Girl: 0
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Sums it nicely :)
 
Dano said:
Hehehe, reminds me of the argument I once had with a mates wife over her insistance that Nasa have a room they can suck all the air out of to turn off mavity.
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Way too early in the morning to have to deal with something like this. Ok, she is a mates wife but how do you deal with the temptation to just laugh, say "no" firmly and walk off? I think that is how I'd approach the situation.

And as has already been explained lightning rods don't attract lightning per se, they just provide an easy path to ground which means that the lightning is less likely to damage anything else if it follows it.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Way too early in the morning to have to deal with something like this. Ok, she is a mates wife but how do you deal with the temptation to just laugh, say "no" firmly and walk off? I think that is how I'd approach the situation.
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Sadly I was unable to do so as I was there for a few hours and my 'no' was met with the inane twitterings of a woman who thought she was right, it was amusing because she kept referencing Armeggedon (yes, that Bruce Willis movie) as her source, this just made it even funnier as she hadn't even understood what she was seeing in the film either and refused to see it any other way :)
 
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