Mostly Weather Episode 4 - Lightning
In this month's episode, the Mostly Weather team take on the often shocking, sometimes electrifying and always hot topic of lightning.
Warning: this episode, like the previous sentence, contains multiple lightning puns.
Amongst a host of other lightning related facts and stories, this episode covers:-
- The conditions needed for lightning
- What particles get up to in clouds to create lightning - the 'rubbing a balloon on your jumper effect'
- Brown & McFly's 1985 seminal paper: 'On charging flux capacitors'
- What lightning bolts are made of and how much energy is within them
- Ben Franklin's kite experiment
- Why NASA dislike Floridian lightning storms
- Doug's experience with a maritime faraday cage
- How we forecast lightning and why this important for aviation, events and the Queen
- The effects of climate change on the number of lightning strikes each year
- Why being a man might make you more susceptible to being struck by lightning
Additional show notes
Sprites and elves
XKCD comic on conditional risk
A faintly visible example of Lichtenburg figure scarring
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