Is there any research going into harnessing lightning?

yeah...put it in the same place as that flashlight.....

I have yet to place my ass available to the grid

yes... it is done in Sarasota Florida...

They put flashlights up your ass in Sarasota??????

lol - you lot save me the bother of watching tv

no they research lightening and have for a number of years

But, if you go a bit further south along the beach in Sarasota to the Island they will do that for you if you like. Hell you would probably end up being very popular too

Indeed...I think I need to get down there a little more often....I hear Key West is a good place to get kabobed these days....

Should have said, anyone playing Light Bright would be very popular

mmmm, don't have to go as far as the Keys though

hehehehe

I've heard it said that being struck by lightning could endow someone with special powers. So I stood out in the rain and lightning, purely as research, and after being struck I can tell you that the only ability I was endowed with was the ability to shake on the ground and sh#t my pants...will I use it for good or evil?...I don't know!



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If they did find a way to trap and harness lightning, wouldn't they take that knowledge and turn it into a weapon? Just a paranoid thought.

Not if you use a safety 'bolt'

There's a place in New Mexico or Arizona (IIRC) that is doing research into lightning. They launch small rockets trailing a wire to ground as a path for the lightning to strike and then make measurements, etc.

The problem with harnessing lightning would be the storage of the energy without destroying what it is that you want to store the energy in. You'd need something that could absorb an immense amount of energy in a very short period of time (like a relativistic flashlight ).

I can tell you that the only ability I was endowed with was the ability to shake on the ground and sh#t my pants...will I use it for good or evil?...I don't know!

That sounds evil to me

ewwwwwwwwwwwww

so that's what that smell was

http://www.ece.ufl.edu/

Yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!....you're not stickin' that up my ass, John






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WOW!

I was thinking maybe a giant capacitor.(quick charge,slow release)

The current flow and high voltage spike from lightning would fry a capacitor.

You'd need one with a very low effective series resistance, a very high dielectric value, and a very high capacitance. Even then, assuming you could reliably get the lightning through the cap (the ESR would likely be higher than the ionized current path through the air, which would make the lightning go through the air instead of the cap), capacitors don't charge as quickly as all that, there's a time/charge curve that limits how fast it can charge.

It's remotely possible that we could store some small amount of the charge, but the usefulness would be limited, since we can't really get a strike to target effectively (even the rockets and wire don't get a hit all the time).

It could be set up to burn out flashlight bulbs, though

Those are some seriously cool lightning strike images, though

Getting lightning to strike something is no problem...if its set up permanent,it WILL get hit.What about a bank of sand resistors to curb the initial strike before it hits the capacitor?

Ah, yes, Florida....lightning capital of the world!?! (ok, could possibly be only the US! )

Un-harnessed lightning over the swamp.....makes lots of things glow......and causes the elephants to tap dance on the roof of buildings......

The problem with using some sort of resistance is twofold:

First, if a cap is the storage medium, adding resistance will increase the time to charge the cap.

Second, adding resistance will make the lightning current more likely to take a different path (even if it hits the structure that has the cap, the lightning might just go around the cap, instead of into it).


All said, I think it would be quite cool if we could set up some mechanism to store at least some of a lightning strike, if for no other reason than that it would be a neat technical problem. Getting any real useful energy from it would likely be more work and resources than getting power from usual sources.