Lightening Part 2: Man-Made Lightening

I recently came back from a trip to Boston where I had the wonderful fortune to stumble upon the Museum of Science and it's indoor Lightening show. If your ever in the Boston area, it is definitely worth checking out.



This one of the exciting machines used during the Museum of Science's Lightening Shows. Image provided by the Museum's Theater of Electricity.

The really neat thing about the Museum of Science's Lightening show was all of the equipment in the Theater of Electricity. There was the Van der Graaff generator, several tesla coils of varying sizes, and a specially modified tesla coil contraption that can change the sound that lightening makes. It was a very well equipped set-up. Perfect for creating a man-made indoor lightening storm.

During the presentation, I learned two pretty interesting factoids about lightening that I did not know before:

1. Rubber Tires Do Not Keep You Safe In A Lightening Storm - Instead, it is the car's metal exterior that keeps passengers safe during a lightening storm. Now I know that seems counter intuitive, but just hear me out. Air like rubber is not a conductive material,but lightening has no trouble breaking through hundreds of yards of air to reach its final destination on the surface of the Earth. Which means that rubber tires are not going to be much protection in the event of a lightening strike. This is were the car's metal exterior comes in. Metal is in contrast to rubber and air, a very good conductor of electricity. In fact it is much more conductive than a human being ever could be. So when given a choice between the two a highly charged lightening bolt is going to want to go through metal rather than the human being. The reason that the lightening does not affect the passengers of a car is that the charge of the lightening passes through the exterior frame of the vehicle which is conductive enough to handle the high voltage of the strike and provides the best pathways to the ground. 
2. The Frequency Of Lightening Can Be Changed To Produce Different Sounds - It sounds kind of out there but the Museum of Science has a machine in their Theater of Electricity that can change the frequency of the sound that lightening makes. This allows the machine to produce a whole range of different sounds that can even be put together into a tune. Don't believe me? Check out the Lightening Show link.

I already had a basic understanding of how lightening storms worked, but it was really interesting to see what scientists had been doing with the information.


Sources and Links:

1.  Museum of Science: http://www.mos.org/exhibits_shows/live_presentations&d=194
2.  Lightening Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou47oQdSKho&feature=related
3.  My Previous Blurb About Lightening: http://blurbsaboutscience.tumblr.com/post/28998696197/lightening-and-thunder-storms