Re: Electricity again


Sorcerer wrote:

One gigawatt for 1 microsecond is 1 kw/sec, which is 0.278 kWh.
I could run a 100 watt lighting bulb for 2.78 hours on the energy of
one lightning bolt. Not very useful.

Do you ever read anything longer than the side panel of a cereal box?

The Wiki article on lightning (I've posted the link multiple times)
tells us:
"An average bolt of negative lightning carries a current of 30-to-50
kiloamperes(kA), although some bolts can be up to 120kA, and transfers
a charge of 5 coulombs and 500 megajoules (enough to light a 100 watt
light bulb for 2 months). " [the section titled "The discharge"]

and in the next secion (on *positive* lightning) it goes on:
"An average bolt of positive lightning carries a current of up to 300
kiloamperes (about ten times as much current as a bolt of negative
lightning), transfers a charge of up to 300 coulombs, has a potential
difference up to 1 gigavolt (a billion volts), lasts for hundreds of
milliseconds, and dissipates enough energy to light a 100 watt
lightbulb for up to 95 years."

|
| At 1.06 volts per voltaic cell
| http://www.fleetsubmarine.com/battery.html
| you would need about *5 Billion* cells wired *in series* to capture a 5
| gigavolt lightning bolt.

Connect them in parallel, then. I regularly recharge my beard trimmer
from a nominal 3V source, it's a "so-what" if it works and it has for 3
years.

Then you look around for a 3V lightning bolt.

Voltages add in series, but not in parallel. You can't put 5 billion
volts into a 3 volt battery. Transformers only work with smoothly
varying AC, not with DC or pulsed current.

Honestly, you seem to be completely ignorant of even the most basic
facts of electrical technology.

I'm not suggesting you charge batteries directly. I was comparing power,
read what I said.
On your guesstimates, 5 gigavolt * 300,000 amps for "fraction" of a
second (I've chosen 1 microsecond)

Your preference for straw men is well known, both here and in the
Village. Lightning lasts *hundreds* of microseconds, as mentioned in
the Wiki article you have been ignoring.

is 5kV * 300,000 amps for one
second, or 1.5 MW per second,

If power is energy per unit second then power per unit second is what,
exactly?

The *power* of lightning bolts is on the order of *gigawatts*, not
megawatts.

You cannot replace a 1000 hp dragster with 1000 one-horsepower horses
and still get the same kind of performance. It doesn't work that way.

about that of a wind turbine generator.
I mention that because the air pressure pulse of a lightning crack is
essentially a short burst of wind that becomes thunder as it echoes
and lasts longer.

Try an *explosion* of air heated to a 36,000 K plasma in a hundred
microseconds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder
"In the 20th century a consensus evolved that thunder must begin with a
shockwave in the air due to the sudden thermal expansion of the plasma
in the lightning channel."

The shock wave expands at Mach 1.0, a little too fast for a 'wind.'

There is insufficient energy in a lightning bolt to be useful in a practical
sense, but we have the technology to capture it should we so choose.

The energy (hundreds of megajoules) is more than adequate to be
considered useful. Several gigavolts and hundreds of kiloamps at the
same time make it hard to capture. We should feel fortunate that we
have access to suitable conductors for that much current. Many
pre-Franklin structures have been ruined by lightning strikes.

Tom Davidson
Richmond, VA

.

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