All of the Lightning in One Spot? - Nuclear Engineer Reacts to XKCD

[aneasteregg]

It's a fun thing to me how almost every major power source on Earth is, ultimately, derived from sunlight.

[BelgorathTheSorcerer]

Lightning struck a tree next to me once. It was so close I was able to feel the heat from it. It was terrifying, but pretty cool.
Everything got really calm right before, and I could actually feel the charge build up. It was the same sensation as a charged balloon lifting your hair up, but over my entire body.
Then I felt a huge spike in temperature momentarily, and I was blinded by the flash for a few seconds, so the next thing I saw was tree embers raining down around me. A huge chunk of the tree just exploded, and there were some good size pieces that probably could have impaled me. All of that wasn't really that bad though.
The thunderclap sucked. I felt it ripple through me, it hurt my ears enough that they wouldn't stop ringing for weeks, and it literally scared the crap out of me. My undies were unsalvageable.

Despite the thunderclap being unpleasant, it was an exhilarating experience, and I kind of want to know what actually getting hit by a strike would feel like. Definitely a less powerful one though.

[jairo]

Your insights usually make the original video even more interesting. These are the best kinds of reaction videos, thank you.

[Shoomer]

I will not hear a bad word about 'Back to the Future', it's one of the finest documentaries ever made.

[edwardbell]

[Power levels at 400 percent]
Well...how about that.

[beyondwx]

For clarity, “Tornado Food” is warm moist air, not mobile homes.

[Zaash]

Hoping Randall does a reading of the "lethal dose of neutrino radiation" what-if at some point, definitely one of my faves.

[ccoder]

Glad somebody finally pointed out that the 1.21 Gigawatts in BTTF isn't necessary all that impressive since they never specify the amount of time. Apparently it's a fairly short period of time, so they didn't need the Mr. Fusion, the plutonium, or the lightning. They just needed a system to slowly charge a bank of capacitors from the alternator, then discharge it rapidly. Not easy, but not really extraordinary either. Especially if it only needed that power for just a few microseconds or less.

[KageRyu]

14:01 "Let's stick with nuclear power plants."
Me, sarcastically: "Yeah, *totally* not biased at all..."
T. Folse: "I'm biased, of course."

Glad we're on the same page. XD

[jamcdonald]

That feeling you get every time someone says jigawatts instead of Gigawatts is the same feeling I get every time you say Turban instead of Turbine

[kgwwn]

The traditional pronunciation of Giga was with a "J" sound (it is the same word we get "Giant" from which we still pronounce with the "J" sound. We pronounce it the way we do not because when gigabytes first were being used frequently in computers, the people who were using them were not scientists who knew to use the proper scientific pronunciation. When Back to the Future was made, if Doc Brown had pronounced it the way we do now, he would have been unquestionably wrong.

[matthewwilkes]

Soft G for Giga is acceptable. We use that prefix a lot more in day-to-day use now, and hard G has become much more common, but that wasn't the case 40 years ago when Back to the Future was being made.

[admdubya]

There’s such a thing as upward lightning that originates from the ground…and tall buildings. They’ve caught the little feeler bolt reaching up to greet a downward one on high speed camera. They can be positive or negatively charged and tend to occur where lightning struck recently. Ex: nearby Positive cloud to ground causes the surrounding field to go negative, leading to an upward positive leader from your office building. It’s spectacular to see in person.

[YICHEN-kh]

‘Lighting struck here last week, we should be safe’. Also the people: get struck by lightning.

[friendlypunk]

I love the tie in to the Song of Storms while talking about lightning.

[John-irzf]

Lighting rods do release a positive ion trail, as does everything.
It's that positive ion "tail" that gets drawn up towards the negative charge field of the cloud.
When the positive ion "tail" contacts the negative field charge, the stored energy is dumped down that positive ion tail, down to whatever was releasing it.
That's why lightning is so random. The ion tail of the tree next to the tall building may contact the negative field in the cloud and the lightning hits the tree, not the tall building.

[michaelrenouf]

When I was a kid I heard what sounded like a bomb went off. Lighting hit my dads aluminum ladder against the house. It must have have split the lighting, because it hit and a tree demolished it and arced inside and hit a mirror and burned it. The burn spot is still there. Absolutely crazy how electricity works lol.

[DrewR]

Your ability to do quick calculations and explain things fluently is so intelligent. And able to use Zelda logic too.

[The_Angry_Medic]

People also underestimate how much static charge can build up on windy days

[robinkelly]

Electrician here. Your understanding of lightning rods is correct. In fact the empire state building was struck 7 times in one storm - all on the lightning rod...