Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Speaker 1: vogelbon Here the story goes that one stormy afternoon in
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty two, Benjamin Franklin set out to discover the
Speaker 1: truth about lightning. This inventor, statesman and bon vivant fashioned
Speaker 1: a kite from a large silk handkerchief and went on
Speaker 1: a kite flying expedition in the middle of a thunderstorm
Speaker 1: in order to demonstrate for the first time that lightning
Speaker 1: is made of electricity by catching a bolt in a jar.
Speaker 1: Or did he well. As with many of the stories
Speaker 1: we tell about lightning, there are some myths to dispel
Speaker 1: here and some important nuances. Today, let's talk about how
Speaker 1: lightning doesn't work and how to keep yourself safe during
Speaker 1: a thunderstorm. A hint, do not go fly a kite.
Speaker 1: First up, let's tackle the proverb that lightning never strikes
Speaker 1: the same place twice. This is a great metaphor for
Speaker 1: how rare brilliance where fortune can be, but it's scientifically untrue.
Speaker 1: Lightning strikes many places repeatedly. The Empire State Building, for example,
Speaker 1: was once used as a lightning laboratory because of its
Speaker 1: knack for collecting atmospheric bolts of electricity. That long metal
Speaker 1: rod pointing up from the top isn't just for Godzilla
Speaker 1: to clean his ears with. The skyscraper is designed to
Speaker 1: take lightning hits and keep on ticking. It struck anywhere
Speaker 1: from a couple dozen to one hundred times a year.
Speaker 1: Lightning tends to be attracted to the tallest point in
Speaker 1: a particular area, leaving the Empire State Building, which stands
Speaker 1: at one thy four hundred and fifty four feet at
Speaker 1: its tip that's four hundred and forty three meters to
Speaker 1: duke it out with the smidgen taller Central Park Tower
Speaker 1: and the slightly shorter Steinway Tower when storm clouds roll
Speaker 1: in over Midtown Manhattan. There are also a number of
Speaker 1: myths about how to stay safe during a thunderstorm. One
Speaker 1: of the common ones, perhaps especially in the car centric
Speaker 1: United States, is that if you can't get inside a building,
Speaker 1: a car is one of these safest places to wade
Speaker 1: out a storm because the rubber tires will insulate you
Speaker 1: from lightning strikes. This is one of the ones where
Speaker 1: nuance matters, because a car is a safe ish place
Speaker 1: during a thunderstorm, but just not because of the tires.
Speaker 1: If that were true, then motorcycles or bicycles, or particularly
Speaker 1: stacked doc martins would protect you too. They do not.
Speaker 1: It is true that rubber is an electrical insulator, not
Speaker 1: a conductor, but an inch or two of it in
Speaker 1: tires or your shoes isn't going to stop lightning from
Speaker 1: striking the roof of your car or your head. If
Speaker 1: that's the tallest thing around where a car has an
Speaker 1: advantage over your bare head is that it's basically a
Speaker 1: passenger sized Faraday cage. Electricity takes the path of least resistance,
Speaker 1: which is down the metal body of your car, a
Speaker 1: much like a lightning rod on a house. The metal
Speaker 1: frame of the car will conduct an electric charge to
Speaker 1: the ground, leaving the inside of the car shock free.
Speaker 1: Just be sure to close the doors, roll up the windows,
Speaker 1: and latch the sun roof in the event of a storm,
Speaker 1: which you probably already did to keep dry, but just saying,
Speaker 1: be aware that a convertible or a fiberglass framed car
Speaker 1: won't protect you in the same way. If you're out
Speaker 1: in a wide open area, you might want to pull over,
Speaker 1: turn off the engine, put your emergency blinkers on and
Speaker 1: wait out the storm in a safe stationary position where
Speaker 1: if lightning does strike your car, it won't send you
Speaker 1: careening out of control via say damage to important electrical
Speaker 1: systems like breaking or steering. And if the thunderstorm is
Speaker 1: accompanied by other conditions like strong winds or flooding that
Speaker 1: could sweep your car away, definitely aim for a more grounded,
Speaker 1: safe location, a pun intended after the fact. However, going
Speaker 1: indoors during a thunderstorm won't make you completely safe. Most
Speaker 1: any structure with walls and a roof is better than
Speaker 1: a vehicle because it offers more physical protection. But remember
Speaker 1: that lightning doesn't follow vampire rules. It doesn't need an
Speaker 1: invitation to come in. During electrical storms, it's best to
Speaker 1: stay away from doors and windows where lightning could travel
Speaker 1: through metal components like a frame or handle, or break
Speaker 1: the glass. To be on the safe side, you should
Speaker 1: also steer clear of anything else that conducts electricity, like appliances,
Speaker 1: especially if they're plugged in with a cord, and even
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing like a shower or kitchen sink, especially if
Speaker 1: you have metal pipes. If you do get caught outside
Speaker 1: during a storm, don't panic. You just want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you're not the tallest object in the area,
Speaker 1: so get to lower ground versus higher ground if you can,
Speaker 1: and never take shelter underneath tall objects like trees or
Speaker 1: metal structures. You'll also want to steer clear of large
Speaker 1: bodies of water. However, if you do panic a little,
Speaker 1: take comfort in the fact the curling up in the
Speaker 1: fetal position is pretty much the gold standard advice. A
Speaker 1: prior wisdom was to lay down flat on the ground
Speaker 1: if you can't find shelter, but the latest from safety
Speaker 1: experts says to curl into what's called a lightning crouch.
Speaker 1: You squat down with your feet together and tuck your
Speaker 1: head toward your knees, with your hands covering your ears.
Speaker 1: The advice here changed because when lightning strikes open ground,
Speaker 1: it can send current some hundred feet or thirty meters
Speaker 1: across the surface. That could mean trouble if you're sprawled out.
Speaker 1: The crouch allows you to stay low while touching the
Speaker 1: ground as little as possible. Note that this position is
Speaker 1: no substitute for high tailing it indoors during a storm,
Speaker 1: but if you're truly trapped outside, it's better than lying flat.
Speaker 1: Also note that lightning isn't only dangerous when it's raining.
Speaker 1: A lightning often hits some three miles that's five kilometers
Speaker 1: outside of a thunderstorm, and can strike much farther. One type,
Speaker 1: sometimes called bolts from the blue, are lightning flashes that
Speaker 1: come out of the back of a thunderstorm from generally
Speaker 1: clear skies as far as twenty five miles or forty
Speaker 1: kilometers from the nearest rain cloud. Another type, called anvil
Speaker 1: lightning arcs away from the center of a storm, striking
Speaker 1: the ground as far as fifty miles or eighty kilometers away.
Speaker 1: If you hear thunder, the safest bet is to take
Speaker 1: shelter just in case, which brings us back to Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin and his seventeen fifty two experiment. Theologized version of
Speaker 1: this event goes that Franklin discovered electricity by getting a
Speaker 1: kite he was holding struck by lightning, but that was
Speaker 1: never really the claim. Humans have been observing and discussing electricity,
Speaker 1: and particularly static electricity, for millennia, and a French scientist
Speaker 1: beat Franklin's proof about lightning by about a month or so,
Speaker 1: and if Franklin had been struck with lightning through a kite.
Speaker 1: He probably would have died not gone on to publish
Speaker 1: about it in the Pennsylvania Gazette. From his account and
Speaker 1: that of fellow scientist Joseph Priestley, who wasn't there but
Speaker 1: was interested, what seems to have happened was this. Franklin
Speaker 1: wanted to show that lightning storms are a form of electricity,
Speaker 1: so he and his son built a simple lightning rod
Speaker 1: in the form of a kite, a silk handkerchief on
Speaker 1: a frame of sticks with a metal wire attached to
Speaker 1: the top. They used a hemp string for the lead
Speaker 1: down to the ground, and then a silk string onto
Speaker 1: the hemp one at hand height. The idea was that
Speaker 1: the hemp would soak up water and conduct electricity, while
Speaker 1: Franklin could hold onto the silk one and shelter in
Speaker 1: a shed's doorway, keeping the silk string and himself more
Speaker 1: or less dry and protected. He also suspended a metal
Speaker 1: key from the hemp string in harm's way. So Franklin
Speaker 1: and his son got the kite in the air, and eventually,
Speaker 1: without ever being struck, what we can now identify as
Speaker 1: negative charge from the ambient storm moved through the damp hemp,
Speaker 1: making its frayed edges stand up, and when Franklin brought
Speaker 1: his positively charged finger near the attached metal key, there
Speaker 1: was a spark. He even collected some of that charge
Speaker 1: in an early type of capacitor called a Leyden jar.
Speaker 1: Some of the modern skepticism about the experiment comes from
Speaker 1: failed attempts to repeat it with materials that would have
Speaker 1: been available in Franklin's day. But we could chock that
Speaker 1: up to difficult to control variables like kite flying dynamics
Speaker 1: and exactly how damp the materials were. Perhaps lightning doesn't
Speaker 1: strike the same kite twice. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article ten Myths about Lightning written by Chris Hoffer
Speaker 1: and do rubber tires Insulate your Car from Lightning? Written
Speaker 1: by Kate Kirshner, both on housetuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production by Heart Radio in partnership with Houstuffworks dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts for
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