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Article #19517Re: Lightning rods. Was: Protecting com
From: Adrian Hurt
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1988 09:02
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1988 09:02
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1599 bytes
In article <44000015@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk>, william@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk writes: > > I think it works like this: We have a pretty enormous charge on the > If this were not the case, then lightning conductors would not stick into > the air, because this positively encourages a local discharge. A church, > forinstance, would have a metal plate, as unpointed as possible, on its > spire, so as to discourage discharge but still provide a path to ground. Ever seen a church with a copper roof? When I was on holiday in Germany, I noticed that the church tower clock had stopped. I found out from the people I was staying with what had happened. The church had recently had its roof repaired, and covered with copper. Within a few days, there was a thunderstorm, and of course it got hit, clobbering the clock. The same storm also wiped out the local power supply for a short while; I was told someone opened their fridge door and nearly got fried. The locals blamed the power failure on the new copper roof. -- "Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott Adrian Hurt | JANET: adrian@uk.ac.hw.cs UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian | ARPA: adrian@cs.hw.ac.uk
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!hwcs!adrian From: adrian@cs.hw.ac.uk (Adrian Hurt) Newsgroups: sci.electronics Subject: Re: Lightning rods. Was: Protecting com Summary: Second hand observations Message-ID: <1907@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk> Date: 25 Jul 88 09:02:05 GMT References: <6179@aw.sei.cmu.edu> <44000015@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk> Organization: Computer Science, Heriot-Watt U., Scotland Lines: 24