Therefore, one could easily generate lightning with equal destructive power? Why is it not used yet in war (airplane to ground) or for entertainment (airplane to airplane)?
aiming is a tough thing
A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
81–90 of 124 posts
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#82if so little power, how does it fry a tree?
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#83Fun facts & questions from Feynamn lectures: > "On an ordinary day over flat desert country, or over the sea, as one goes upward from the surface of the ground the electric potential increases by about 100 volts per meter. Thus there is a vertical electric field E of 100 volts/m in the air. The sign of the field corresponds to a negative charge on the earth’s surface. This means that outdoors the potential at the hei…
'The Action Lab' channel on YouTube did a little experiment with this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VgqRigZAHA
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#84Therefore, one could easily generate lightning with equal destructive power? Why is it not used yet in war (airplane to ground) or for entertainment (airplane to airplane)?
Not really. Think lasers - they're not expensive because of the energy output, they're expensive because concentrating energy output is far more difficult than simply obtaining and outputting energy.
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#85> The average lightning strike contains about 1 million joules, enough energy to fry the founding father in his boots. “The typical house in the U.S. has 100 amp service or about 28 horsepower,” says Kirtley. Boy do I get frustrated when using compatible units without conversion. The unit that I hate more than any other unit in the universe is the KwH, which is dimensionally equivalent to the Joule, so I don't unders…
> 100 amp service at 120V Strictly speaking, 240V. Normal electric service in North America is 240V split-phase, with the distribution transformer's center tap grounded and serving as the neutral line. We normally only use the full 240V for heavy loads like electric ovens, arc welders, large air conditioners, and such. Large buildings often use 208V three-phase power, yielding 120V phase-to-neutral, and large commerc…
Do you work in clean energy tech by any chance? Software people who know these things are like unicorns
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know a lot of people who stand on top of tall towers during storms? Otherwise, unless you know tens of thousands of people there is very little chance of knowing multiple people who have been struck by lightning.
I also know two people, my mother and a leader at my boyscout camp. Both wearing rubber-soled shoes and survived without needing hospitalization. Maybe birthday paradox or something similar at play? Only 64 commenters but appears more common than your belief would indicate. I bet if you are a regular golfer you would know more, and if you spend 100% of your time in a concrete jungle you would know less.
The rubber soles don't mean much, though. The electric current just passed through kilometers of insulation (air). It doesn't care about 2 cm of rubber.
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 100 amp service at 120V Strictly speaking, 240V. Normal electric service in North America is 240V split-phase, with the distribution transformer's center tap grounded and serving as the neutral line. We normally only use the full 240V for heavy loads like electric ovens, arc welders, large air conditioners, and such. Large buildings often use 208V three-phase power, yielding 120V phase-to-neutral, and large commerc…
Do you work in clean energy tech by any chance? Software people who know these things are like unicorns
The residential side can be discovered if you're a DIY homeowner.
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The kilowatt hour is a fantastic unit when talking about electrical consumption. Are you running a 100W load (0.1kW) for an hour? That's 0.1kWh. Running it for ten would make a whole kilowatt hour. This allows for easy calculations of how much something is going to cost in electricity, and the units are such that it's easy to do the math in your head.
You're using a toy example to strawman the Joule counterpoint. How much do you use in a month, which is the typical billing cycle? Off-peak vs. on-peak cost?. In the end there's no practical utility to this. We just pretend that we're living in a world where you get a 100W light bulb and know exactly what it will cost you, and not a world where half your bulbs claim to be 100W but are actually 14W with 100W-incandesc…
> You're using a toy example to strawman the Joule counterpoint.
Not a toy example. That's exactly how I estimate energy consumption for off the shelf devices. And for battery life (W*h but still).
> 100W light bulb and know exactly what it will cost you, and not a world where half your bulbs claim to be 100W but are actually 14W with 100W-incandescent-equivalent and such.
If you've lived with lighting you're responsible for, you've replaced bulbs. You know the different technologies and the packages say how much power they require.
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The typical house has 240 volt service in the US (two legs of 120v). I would also say a decent number of homes have 200amp as well
> The typical house has 240 volt service in the US (two legs of 120v). Can we wire that in a way to would allow installing .uk or .de Schuko Type-F plugs? It would be funny (and weird!) to have 220V available on a european socket for say a desktop equipped with a 1.5kW PSU for the upcoming Nvidia 4090 :)
There may be ordinances requiring a specific plug type, and I'm pretty sure the NEC has opinions on outlets. :)
That said, it's your house, so you may be able to do that in some places. I've thought about it myself, so I can get a euro tea kettle.
That said, the power will still be at 60Hz not 50, which will matter for some uses (e.g. impedances will change).
Re: A lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel (2015)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The typical house has 240 volt service in the US (two legs of 120v). I would also say a decent number of homes have 200amp as well
> The typical house has 240 volt service in the US (two legs of 120v). Can we wire that in a way to would allow installing .uk or .de Schuko Type-F plugs? It would be funny (and weird!) to have 220V available on a european socket for say a desktop equipped with a 1.5kW PSU for the upcoming Nvidia 4090 :)
You’d probably need to do this with an AC-DC-AC transformer to also get the circuit converted to the 50hz cycle European power systems use, but it’d just be a waste because of the power losses involved (not to mention the expense of the transformers). Also, a typical 15A circuit in a home will handle ~1.8kw of sustained load, so as long as you can dedicate a circuit to such a rig, you’d be fine.