Article View: sci.electronics
Article #17700Re: resistance of earth ground
From: Peter Lorraine
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1987 15:40
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1987 15:40
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In a reply to the original question about the resistivity of the
earth someone mentioned that enormous potentials exist across continental
distances. What is the mechanism that generates these potentials?
Is there a return current balancing the generation mechanism? I've
heard that your typical (whatever a high school geography teacher meant
10 or so years back) lightning flash carries several coulombs. The
electrostatic energy in a capacitor is 0.5CV**2. How much energy does
the earth churn out each day moving charge around?
As long as my mind wanders, can anyone think of a way to collect
some of this energy? How about sticking superconducting rods from the
ground up two or so miles and collecting current on a continuous basis?
This is probably not very practical for some fairly obvious reason
(other than the engineering ones :).
Thank you,
Peter Lorraine (lorraine @ tcgould.tn.cornell.edu)
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Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rochester!cornell!batcomputer!lorraine From: lorraine@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Peter Lorraine) Newsgroups: sci.electronics,sci.physics Subject: Re: resistance of earth ground Message-ID: <1571@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> Date: Tue, 30-Jun-87 11:40:20 EDT Article-I.D.: batcompu.1571 Posted: Tue Jun 30 11:40:20 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 1-Jul-87 07:16:21 EDT References: <1315@cullvax.UUCP> Reply-To: lorraine@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Peter Lorraine) Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY Lines: 18 Keywords: potential differences, thunderstorms Summary: origins of large potential differences