| LIGHTNING
HAZARD??
A tongue-in-cheek look at the hazard lightning
poses to amputees - thanks Gaza - you're a gem! I now have another
thing to worry about - jeez, thanks a bunch friend :)
A question
posed on the HMM forum by a German amputee.
Hi
guys,
I have always wondered if we amputees
with our titan prostheses are more
prone to be struck by lightning?
"Don't know much about the
Physics I took ..."
Curious Mike
Cute response....
I was just wondering
this the other day, when I was out walking in the middle of a storm.
My boss suggested I get a copper wire and wrap that around my leg
and let it drag four or five foot behind as a ground.
And the technical
and indepth explanation offered from the inimitable amputee called
Gaza, who now has all amputees running for cover at the least hint
of thunder and lightning..... hehehehee
In a thunder storm,
the surrounding air is charged with positive eon particles, this
looks for a negative source to discharge too, this causes the lightning
strike. A lot of time it's discharged into space - and we see sheet-lightning,
when it is discharged to ground this becomes fork-lightning.
Because we have
carbon and metal parts and friction through walking, I would calculate
we would be 50 times more likley to be struck than a person standing
next to us without the mechanicals, unless you're standing by a
golfer holding his No7 iron.
To help, remember
just before you are struck your hair will start to stand-up on end.
This is the positive eon particals making negative contact - after
that you have 0.001 seconds to react before you are toast.
Gaza
And
then another perspective, probably as helpful as Gaza's...
No.
While all materials conduct electricity, there is no correlation
between using any type of adaptive equipment and lightning. In fact,
the molecular nobility of the materials used in prosthetics would
make it 3 times LESS likely to conduct on your prosthetic side.
On the other hand, the human body is an excellent conductor and
uses electricity for the nervous system to fire properly.
Now if we apply
Forensic Engineering and examine a one legged corpse having been
fried to an extra crispy crackling crunch, we would probably fail
to discern which limb conducted faster or more effeciently. This
would require further studies.
So the next time
it rains stand out on a golf course with, Oh... about at least a
9 iron and wave it about. Let us know how it works out for you.
Joe
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