you at what distance is hard to calculate.
My guess is that you’d be in significant danger anywhere within a minimum of a dozen meters — and farther in fresh water, because the current will be happier to take a shortcut through you.
What would happen if you were taking a shower when you were struck by lightning? Or standing under a waterfall?
You’re not in danger from the spray — it’s just a bunch of droplets of water in the air. It’s the tub under your feet, and the puddle of water in contact with the plumbing, that’s the real threat.
Q. What would happen if you were in a boat or a plane that got hit by lightning? Or a submarine?
A. A boat without a cabin is about as safe as a golf course. A boat with a closed cabin and a lightning protection system is about as safe as a car. A submarine is about as safe as a submarine safe (a submarine safe is not to be confused with a safe in a submarine—a safe in a submarineis substantially safer than a submarine safe).
Q. What if you were changing the light at the top of a radio tower, and lightning struck? Or what if you were doing a backflip? Or standing in a graphite field? Or looking straight up at the bolt?
A.
Q. What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair?
A. Th e bullet won’t affect the path the lightning takes. You’d have to somehow time the shot so the bullet was in the middle of the bolt when the return stroke happened.
Th e core of a lightning bolt is a few centimeters in diameter. A bullet fired from an AK- 47 is about 26 mm long and moves at about 700 millimeters everymillisecond.
Th e bullet has a copper coating over a lead core. Copper is a fantastically good conductor of electricity, and much of the 20,000 amps could easily take a shortcut through the bullet.
Surprisingly, the bullet would handle it pretty well. If it were sitting still, the current would quickly heat and melt the metal. But since it would be moving along so quickly, it would exitthe channel before it could be warmed by more than a few degrees. It would continue on to its target relatively unaffected. Th ere would be some curious electromagnetic forces created by the magnetic field around the bolt and the current flow through the bullet, but none of the ones I examined would change the overall picture very much.
Q. What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning?
A.
1 Or a real one, for that matter.
2 Paleontologists estimate he stood nearly 5 meters tall at the shoulder.
3 While it’s called a “return stroke,” charge is still flowing downward. However, the discharge appears to propagate upward. Th is effect is similar to how when a traffic light turns green, the cars in front startmoving, then the cars in back, so the movement appears to spread backward.
4 For safety reasons, do not use a real sphere.
weird (and worrying) questions from the what if? INBOX, #4
Q. Would it be possible to stop a volcano eruption by placing a bomb (thermobaric or nuclear) underneath the surface? —Tomasz Gruszka
Q. A friend of mine is convinced that there is sound in space. There isn’t, right? —Aaron Smith
Human Computer
Q. How much computing power could we could achieve if the entire world population stopped whatever we are doing right now and started doing calculations?How would it compare to a modern-day computer or smartphone?
—Mateusz Knorps
A. On one hand, humans and computers do very different types of thinking, so comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges.
On the other hand, apples are better. 1 Let’s try directly comparing humans and computers at the same tasks.
It’s easy, though getting harder every day, to invent tasks that a single human can do faster than all the computers in the world. Humans, for example, are probably still far better at looking at a picture of a scene and guessing what just happened:
To test this theory, I sent this picture to my mother and asked her what she
My guess is that you’d be in significant danger anywhere within a minimum of a dozen meters — and farther in fresh water, because the current will be happier to take a shortcut through you.
What would happen if you were taking a shower when you were struck by lightning? Or standing under a waterfall?
You’re not in danger from the spray — it’s just a bunch of droplets of water in the air. It’s the tub under your feet, and the puddle of water in contact with the plumbing, that’s the real threat.
Q. What would happen if you were in a boat or a plane that got hit by lightning? Or a submarine?
A. A boat without a cabin is about as safe as a golf course. A boat with a closed cabin and a lightning protection system is about as safe as a car. A submarine is about as safe as a submarine safe (a submarine safe is not to be confused with a safe in a submarine—a safe in a submarineis substantially safer than a submarine safe).
Q. What if you were changing the light at the top of a radio tower, and lightning struck? Or what if you were doing a backflip? Or standing in a graphite field? Or looking straight up at the bolt?
A.
Q. What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair?
A. Th e bullet won’t affect the path the lightning takes. You’d have to somehow time the shot so the bullet was in the middle of the bolt when the return stroke happened.
Th e core of a lightning bolt is a few centimeters in diameter. A bullet fired from an AK- 47 is about 26 mm long and moves at about 700 millimeters everymillisecond.
Th e bullet has a copper coating over a lead core. Copper is a fantastically good conductor of electricity, and much of the 20,000 amps could easily take a shortcut through the bullet.
Surprisingly, the bullet would handle it pretty well. If it were sitting still, the current would quickly heat and melt the metal. But since it would be moving along so quickly, it would exitthe channel before it could be warmed by more than a few degrees. It would continue on to its target relatively unaffected. Th ere would be some curious electromagnetic forces created by the magnetic field around the bolt and the current flow through the bullet, but none of the ones I examined would change the overall picture very much.
Q. What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning?
A.
1 Or a real one, for that matter.
2 Paleontologists estimate he stood nearly 5 meters tall at the shoulder.
3 While it’s called a “return stroke,” charge is still flowing downward. However, the discharge appears to propagate upward. Th is effect is similar to how when a traffic light turns green, the cars in front startmoving, then the cars in back, so the movement appears to spread backward.
4 For safety reasons, do not use a real sphere.
weird (and worrying) questions from the what if? INBOX, #4
Q. Would it be possible to stop a volcano eruption by placing a bomb (thermobaric or nuclear) underneath the surface? —Tomasz Gruszka
Q. A friend of mine is convinced that there is sound in space. There isn’t, right? —Aaron Smith
Human Computer
Q. How much computing power could we could achieve if the entire world population stopped whatever we are doing right now and started doing calculations?How would it compare to a modern-day computer or smartphone?
—Mateusz Knorps
A. On one hand, humans and computers do very different types of thinking, so comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges.
On the other hand, apples are better. 1 Let’s try directly comparing humans and computers at the same tasks.
It’s easy, though getting harder every day, to invent tasks that a single human can do faster than all the computers in the world. Humans, for example, are probably still far better at looking at a picture of a scene and guessing what just happened:
To test this theory, I sent this picture to my mother and asked her what she