Stuff You Should Know - How Lightning Works

Episode Date: July 12, 2012

You've seen lightning before, and maybe you're even afraid of it. You should be. The air is ripped apart and a sudden electrical discharge burning six times brighter than the sun connects with Earth. Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. This is a pretty mellow intro. I'm Josh. That's Chuck. This makes Stuff You Should Know. That's Jim Morrison. Yes, it was. That was the door's rider on the storm.

Do we have Jim in the studio with us today? Yeah. Hey, Jim. Did you ever see that Gap ad where they showed Jim Morrison off fat and old? No. It was a while ago. Like probably 10 years ago, they did some of these 60s icons that passed away early as old people and like really realistically. That was pretty funny. Yeah. I don't recall that at all. And I watched a lot of TV or I used to. I think it was a magazine ad, print ads. Oh, I read a lot of magazines. Oh, Fair Use Alert, Fair Use Alert. So Riders on the Storm was

released on the 1971 album LA Woman, which we would imagine is available at a wide variety of retailers online and at Brick and Mortar stores. Yeah. Great song. Yeah. And I'm kind of over a lot of the doors, but I like that song. Man, I go, it's like how I imagine a lot of people are with Zeppelin. It's like, oh, I love Zeppelin. I'm in sixth grade. And then it just kind of goes away. But then you get older and you're like, wow, they really were great. Yeah. That didn't happen to me in Zeppelin. I got over them after sixth grade. You know that. But the doors, that's happened to me. You're back into them again.

Oh, I mean, I just constantly am like in a state of coming in or out of really appreciating the doors. But for the most part, it's solidified. It's gelled. I love the doors. You know, if you want to keep that intact, do yourself a favor and don't ever read any of Jim Morrison's poetry books. I have. I have. Have you ever heard American Prayer? It's like one of the coolest things anyone's ever made. I'm not a fan of his poetry. Yeah. Well, I mean, his songs were poetry. Riders on the Storm is a poem set to music. He's the Lizard King. Yeah. He can do anything. That's right. So Chuck, have you heard of a guy named Roy Sullivan? Yeah, I remember him from being a kid. Do you really? Yeah, from the old Guinness Book Record. I must have skipped over

his entry because I read those too. I remember when they'd come out and you'd be like, oh my god, you'd be like the Scholastic Book Fair, which amounted to a couple of like cards with books on them on the hallway and some guy you didn't recognize standing there selling them. I missed that one. But let's tell everybody else. I haven't looked him up since then. But if I remember correctly, he had the record for being struck, right? Yeah. Yeah. Roy Sullivan, he was a ranger, a park ranger at Shenandoah National Park. Okay. Okay. And he died in 1983. And between 1940 and 1977, he was struck seven times, struck by lightning seven times. And actually, there's two of his ranger Stetson hats that he was wearing while he was struck that are in the Guinness World Record,

I guess, museums. And they have like burned holes in them, right? Yeah. And he was just smiling. I remember seeing the picture. Yeah, picture in my head. He did not die of being struck by lightning. He died, what, a full six years after the last time he was struck. Really? Yeah. From like plugging in something in his house and getting shocked. He's like stripped on a banana peel, right? Yeah. So it's it, I guess I bring this up because we're talking about lightning and you brought up a really excellent point that his Stetson hat was burned. But this guy survived, even though lightning is many, many, many times more powerful than, you know, a typical industrial electrocution voltage or that will just typically kill anybody.

Lightning frequently people survive. As a matter of fact, like two thirds of people who are struck by lightning survive. Yeah. Between 90% and two thirds, depending on who you ask, that's pretty good. So I am very excited about this one. That's so classic. I love natural phenomena. I do too. I love earth sciences. I don't necessarily. I do because I get it. Once you get it, it's like geometry. Like once you get geometry, you can't un-get geometry. And all of a sudden, this whole segment of nature just becomes clear to you. Well, I'm glad you're covering this side of the love because I don't have it. You don't. No, I mean, I think it's neat enough, but I'm not as into the earth sciences. At the very least, the pictures in this article are really, really

awesome. Yeah. Did you get to see some of them? I mean, those are pretty. Very pretty. It's black and white and that's still worth looking at. Look at all those leaders. If you want to go, if you want to go to the website, howstuffworks.com and type in lightning, it will bring up a lot of these pictures, but in color. Yeah. We just don't print in color here. I do occasionally, but yeah. Do you? If it's something that I think should be in color. I like to preserve cyan. Good for you. All right. So Chuck, let's talk lightning, shall we? Sure. You got your Statman role. Did you read that one thing for the NASA article? There's some stats in there that I thought you just have a bonanza with. I didn't get to it. Oh, buddy. All right. I'll play the Statman role then. Okay.

Because there were some good stats in there. Do you want me to start out with a few? Sure. Chuck, I got a few too. Between this one study of lightning strikes between 1959 and 1994 found that, let's see, 9,818 people were struck by lightning in that time. 3,239 died. 20% died immediately. Like it was like, you were just struck by lightning, you're over. Yeah. That's got to be like a direct strike, right? All of them are direct strikes. Oh, really? As far as I understand, yes. These were all direct strikes. Like you can be struck directly like Ranger Roy. Yeah. And he survived. Men are four times likelier than women to be struck by lightning. Okay. The two thirds of lightning casualties occur between 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. with the maximum

at 4 p.m. Yes. Most lightning casualties happen on a Sunday and Wednesday is the second most frequent day. And then July is the peak month. Florida is the state that has the most reported lightning strikes for people. So if it's 4 p.m. on a Wednesday in July and you're in Florida and you're a man holding like a golf club, kiss your butt goodbye. The good Lord would never stop the best game of golf I've ever played. I think I remember in a different podcast we talked about the 4th of July actually being the number one day. I think I remember that as well. And I think that's part and parcel to the fact that July is the biggest month and there are way more people outside recreating your bodies of water on the 4th of July, which water of course

could help. Yeah. I knew this dude who actually printed the alternative paper that I helped found and he would say that he was vacating. We're going to vacate for two weeks, me and the family going down to Disney World to vacate. That's pretty funny. Yeah. The only little cool fact to what I have are lightning is not necessarily always white or whiteish yellow. It has to do with the background. Oh really? Yeah. I didn't know that. And that lightning is only an inch wide. Yeah. I saw it was one to two inches in diameter. Crazy. Yeah. That's it. And it's hot. 654,000 degrees or six times hotter than the surface of the sun. I saw 60,000. Yeah. I'd say that's in the same range. That's close. Sure. I mean that's 6,000 degrees. That's not much when you're

up that high. Yeah. It'll fry an egg for sure. All right. So you say that there are some cool factoids associated with lightning. I say that lightning as a whole is one cool factoid. Agreed. Made up of smaller component factoids. Agreed. Yeah. And also I'm sure somebody's going to be like, you guys used the word factoid wrong, but we will decimate that person. All right. Do we need to start with with clouds since we've covered that so thoroughly or? I feel like we do because with this process of cloud formation, it is part and parcel with lightning formation. They think we should really point out here, man, that it's not just this article. It's not just how stuff works that says that scientists aren't really sure how all this happens. Yeah. NASA says so.

What's the national laboratory? It begins with the A. Man. Well, anyway, one of the national laboratories says so that I wrote about. So basically, we don't fully understand how lightning forms. But well, it's invisible. We have some good guesses. It occurs within a second. So it's like it's not the easiest thing in the world to study. No, it's really not. You know, if you think about it, we can recreate it, which is pretty neat. I am. Okay. So, but yes, let's start with precipitation in the water cycle, right? Okay. You've got water, say here on the earth surface when heat is transferred from the environment. Remember, heat always goes from something that's warm to something that's cold. That's how heat transfer occurs. Yeah. Something doesn't lose

its cold. It gains heat, right? That's right. So when that happens, water can vaporize and rise up into the atmosphere. That's evaporation. Yeah. And once it reaches a certain point, it's going to lose its heat to the external environment. Cool down. It's going to turn back into water. It's going to fall back down to the ground in the form of precipitation. That's condensation, right? Yeah. So it's either going to get slightly chilly and be rain or it's going to get really chilly and be snow or freezing rain. Right. So if you get enough water vapor going up and you get enough condensation starting to come down and they start knocking into each other, this is what scientists think. They can start knocking electrons from one another.

Yeah. The electrons are going to keep going down. They're going to stay, say, as a cloud form. They're going to, they're going to accumulate around the bottom of the cloud. Yeah. Like a little, a little puffy cloud couch there at the bottom of the cloud. They're all tucked in. They just settle in and nestle down. And then for just for this example sake, think of positively charged particles, the ones that are now missing their electron, are just lighter. So they're going to accumulate at the top. Yeah. But they're contained in the cloud. Right. So at the top of the cloud, you have all these positively charged particles. At the bottom, you have negatively charged particles, electrons. And all of a sudden, you have what's called an electric field. Yeah. Charge separation,

which is, can do some funky stuff. Well, that's how batteries work. Yeah. Because Chuck, as you'll remember, nature loves homeostasis. Right. Yeah. If it's, if these things are separate, they just want to bring them back together. Exactly. Electrons love to flow toward the direction of positively charged particles to neutralize it. Yeah. And that's an electric charge. It's electricity is just an electron flow. Okay. So you have a cloud that's suddenly like a battery. A big honking battery. Yeah. And as this, as this, this charge separation becomes more and more charged, like the, there's more and more positive particles, more and more negative particles. Yeah. It actually, as these negative particles are the electrons are accumulating

at the bottom of the cloud, they, the charge can become so great that here on the earth surface, dude, it actually presses the electrons down into the earth. Yeah. And it's so hard to imagine this, but it, it happens when you're walking around out there during a thunderstorm. Yeah. Like, it is being pushed below your feet, leaving the ground positively charged and ready to join their little buddies up there in the clouds. So you have this layer of electrons and now you have two, basically two electric fields that can either go up. Yeah. Within the cloud or it can go down to the ground. Yeah. That's a common, like that was my first question was, if these electrons within the cloud are separated, why are they going all the way down to earth?

Why don't they just, you know, have lightning inside the cloud? And the answer is, well, that happens all the time. Yeah. That's the most common form of lightning is when the electrons form lightning within its little fluffy buddy there. With it's like cloud to cloud or intra cloud lightning intra cloud is within the same cloud. Inter is between two clouds. Okay. But it's, it still falls in the cloud to cloud category. Yeah. So I think there's two main divisions cloud to cloud and cloud to ground. Yeah. And then ground to cloud is also ground to cloud still. Sure. But it's not because it's going between the ground and cloud or between a cloud and itself for another cloud. Yeah. I like a little cloud on cloud action. Okay. So you have this, you have

the earth suddenly taking on a positive charge on its surface. You have a strong negative charge at the bottom of the, at the bottom of the cloud. Yeah. And you have nature going like, what's to do? This is terrible. Like there's an electrical potential here and it's making me nervous. Like something has to change. So something does change. There's this process called the ionization of air and it's basically turning air into what's called plasma. Yeah. By ripping it apart essentially. Yeah. I like to call it ionic separation. I've coined that term. Nice. I don't know if it's what anyone else in science calls it, but basically the air around the cloud breaks down. So the electric field was really strong. It separates the ions. Now they can move

a lot more freely and can conduct a lot more electricity in the end. Yeah. It takes regular air, like the stuff we're breathing now and it separates the electrons from the positive ions. Yeah, but not, they're still within the same area. They're not like completely separate. Right. It's not like a, it's not like opening the curtains with two hands, but it is kind of in a certain way with these free electrons. It makes this little bit of air that's been ionized much more conductive, like you said. Yeah. Plasma. Okay. So these things, this happens in little like 50 yard jolts and they call those step leaders. Each little rip, each little separation of their creation of plasma creates a channel in the air

that's very conductive, way more conductive than the surrounding air and it happens in little 50 yard branches. Yeah. And they don't have to go straight down. They're basically looking, they're looking to get to the ground with the path of least resistance. So if you see this, Discovery had a show, did you see that on YouTube? The, what was it called? Raging Planet. Discovery had a show called Raging Planet. Oh yeah. Yeah. And for the first time, they filmed a lightning strike in the super slow mo. So when you see this, like with your naked eye, I mean, it all happens in a blip and you just see a lightning strike. But when you see it slow down, you see the lightning working its way down in little 50 yard bits and fracturing off to the

left and to the right and basically like disappearing again, because it didn't find its way all the way to the ground. Oh yeah. Yeah. We just go like, to the left and then disappear and then it will go down and then it will go to the right and disappear. Right. Because these channels that, that form, basically you have a bunch of these step leaders coming down and whichever reaches the ground first wins. But just because one reach the ground doesn't mean the other ones automatically disappear. Yeah. So that flow of electrons is going to fill up all of the associated ion channels. Yeah. These pass that it's created. Right. Sure. With this flow of electrons. Right. So before that happens though, you've got these step leaders coming down from the clouds. You

also have something called positive leaders. Right. It's positive streamers. I'm sorry. Yeah. You also have positive streamers coming up from the ground. So a positive streamer is a or a step leader is a plasma channel forming in the direction of the flow of electrons. A positive streamer is a plasma channel forming in the opposite direction of the flow of electrons. So it's kind of stretching up and it could come from the ground. It could come from your head. It could come from a tree or that golf club you're holding and they've captured these in photographic form and it's the same thing. It looks like, you know, a little purplish bolt of lightning coming up from the ground. Right. Trying to join up with its buddy that's coming down from the sky. Yeah. And

like you said, it can come from you. The reason your hair lifts up when you're in like an electrical storm. Yeah. You just become a positive streamer, which is not good. It sounds nice. It does. And you're glowing a little purplish, but you're in big trouble if it connects with you. Yeah. And it's the same concept. If you've ever shocked yourself on a doorknob, it's the same thing. The closer you're once you've built up that energy, the hand gets closer to the metal and it leaps out from your finger and out from the doorknob and, you know, you've got lightning. Okay. So I mean, we're drawn this out like I'm about to hyperventilate. I'm so excited. Finally, at one point, you have a step leader. And like you said, it's taken the path of least resistance, right? So it's not going to

come straight down largely because the shape of the cloud is not equal or is not totally flat. Yeah. Particles in the air can get in the way, all kinds of stuff. Right. So they're coming down in little branches that branch off some lead nowhere. Eventually one comes down and a step leader connects with a positive streamer. And all of a sudden you have a full uninterrupted path for these electrons to flow and boy, do they flow. What you have is lightning, right? That's right. You have a sudden current exchange from the cloud down to the earth and then from the earth back up to the cloud. Because the lightning strike isn't just from the cloud to the ground. It goes down and then back up immediately. Yeah. And it's on the back up. Yeah. Return stroke. Yes. A return stroke. Thank you.

On the way back up, that's when you see the light. Literally. So lightning is we don't actually see the electron flow. We see the local effects of the electron flow. And this electron flow produces a tremendous amount of heat energy. What did you say it was like hotter than the surface of the sun? Yeah. Six times hotter. So that's what you're seeing right there is an explosion of heat. Right. And then that heat actually explodes the air around it. And that produces thunder. Yeah. The way I understood it was the channel, the ionized plasma channel that's created when it goes away, the air collapsing back in on itself is what creates that sound, that sound wave. Is that right? What I heard was that it's actually exploding outward and it's compressing the air,

basically exploding the air around it. That converts into a shockwave in the form of sound that travels outward. That's how I understood it. Well, maybe it collapses in and explodes out. That's very democratic of you. And then one more thing about thunder, Chuck. Get this. There's three segments to the sound of thunder. Did you know that? I thought Pink Floyd said there was like four. Really? No, I'm just kidding. Okay. Because I remember delicates on the thunder, but I don't remember four parts. No, it's different. Okay. So there's the first part. I mean, think about it. Think about when you've ever heard thunder. There's like a few sounds to it, right? Sure. So the first part is actually caused by the step leaders. That's a tearing sound. The second,

a cracking sound is actually caused by the positive streamers. And then the third part is the explosion of the air blowing up. But what you're hearing those first two parts is literally the air ripping open. Isn't that crazy? Yep. And if you are out in the country, you might be able to hear that as far away as 15 miles. Yeah. If you're in the city, maybe about five miles. You'll be able to hear that thunder. And it is true that you can divide by five. And that is roughly how far away your lightning is from you. That's true. Counting from the point the lightning strikes till you hear the thunder. Divide that amount of seconds by five, 10 seconds, it's two miles away. How does that rule of thumb work? I mean, don't storms travel faster?

Well, no, I think it has nothing to do with how fast you're traveling. It's the speed of light versus the speed of sound. Oh, yeah. Because the speed of light travels at the speed of light, the speed of sound is far, far slower, which is why the sound of thunder lags the flash of lightning so much. You just explain it to yourself. Thank you. Thanks, sir. No problem. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime

example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. What is it for? Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. This is what it sounds like inside the boxcar. I'm journalist in Elmorton in my podcast city of

the rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop trains. Just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm gonna end up and I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle on the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you can have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city

of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts or cityoftherails.com. I think it's time for lightning myth number one. Whoa, that was good. That was a good sound effect. Way to go, Jerry. All right, lightning myth number one. Once again, the tallest objects in a storm don't always get struck by lightning. It would make sense that lightning, if you know, that's going to be reaching something that's sticking up from the ground in the way of a positive streamer, that the tallest thing will always be that thing. And that is not the case because you can never really predict the path of lightning. It might strike the ground right next to the tallest thing.

It might also, yes, because that path of least resistance, whether it's dust or the curvature of the earth or whatever, you can't predict where it's going to go. And even more than that, once the lightning is struck, it may jump. Oh, yeah. That is a property of lightning. It may jump to something that has an even lesser path of resistance. That's right. And that could be you. So it could strike a tree that you're standing by and you could be like, whoo, and then did it. Yeah. Way to bust that myth. Oh, thank you. I think since you brought that up, we might as well talk about the fact that when you see lightning and you see it in the clouds and then down on the ground and then flickering in the clouds afterward and remnants branching off, that's like maybe

40 or 50 lightning strikes you're seeing all at once. Right. It's pretty cool. The whole idea that lightning doesn't strike the same place twice. Every time it strikes it twice. It strikes it like, like you said, 40, 50 times. Yeah, it's that electron flow, the back and forth between the ground and the earth in this, which neutralizes the electrical charge. It's not just one stroke. It's 40 or 50. Yeah. And that's what you're more likely to see even unless you just happen to be looking in the field of view of that original blast. Right. That's why it's so tough to capture like the Discovery Channel guy on Raging Planet was, he like sits in a room with this little camera. And I would just let the camera run. I don't know why he sat there with his finger on the button.

It's like, dude, just press record and walk away. Right. But I guess. No, he's a purest. Well, I think maybe because it's such a high speed camera. Plus also, hypstamatic doesn't have a video function. But he likened it to fishing. He said it's a little like fishing. Did he say it like that? Like a jerk? Yeah, he was a little bored. But he got it. You know, it was all worth in the end. Yeah, that's what counts. Okay, Josh, I think it's time to talk about various types of lightning. Yeah. So we talked about ground to or cloud to ground under an umbrella under which ground to cloud falls. Sure. And there's another way to put it is that that's triggered or artificial and natural. Natural is when it comes down from the cloud to the ground. Yeah. Triggered or artificial

is when some sort of manmade structure, say a skyscraper initiates this lightning. So it's sending up a positive streamer like, Hey, man, come on, let's do this. Right. And the cloud's like, Oh, okay. And then it comes down to rather than rather than the cloud pressing down the electrons, I think, right on the Earth's surface and then just hitting a cow. Because what's more natural than lightning striking a cow? That's right. Instant prime rib. Yeah. Um, types of lightning, normal lightning, which pretty much is what we've been talking about sheet lightning is reflected in the clouds. And I guess that would fall under intra and inter cloud lightning. I would think so. Heat lightning is my favorite, because that reminds me of growing up,

going to Florida and swimming at my cousin's house. And heat lining is basically lightning is so far away, you can't hear the thunder. Right. And it's hot enough. The reason they call it heat lightning is because it's hot enough that it's being reflected a tremendous distance by this higher temperature atmosphere. It's a comforting lightning though. It is. It's often reddish. Yeah. And during the summer months. Yeah. Ball lightning, which we have talked about before, we weren't entirely certain back then that it actually existed. But I think since we've mentioned it. Oh, really? Is it super proven that we've figured out that it can exist, but no one understands it? Yeah, that's the phenomenon where like you will see a ball of lightning

going through your house, correct? Yes. Remember it was like one of the some listener wrote wrote in about it. Yeah. Was it like the spun his combustion? I don't know that I've ever seen it captured though on film or anything. Has it been? Yes, it's been recreated. Oh, okay. That's I don't think it's been someone hasn't caught the natural version of it. But yeah, so we've proven it can exist. But yeah, it'll burn you and then it'll blow up. It's really dangerous, scary, crazy lightning that no one gets. Josh, is it time for lightning myth number two? It sounds like it. Number two, and this is something I learned today. A surge protector will not save your computer and your television from a lightning strike. I thought that's what they

were for. Yeah, apparently they're only for they can only save your computer or TV if it's something that the power company has surged right to surge from your electrical supply. So what you need is something called a what's it called a lightning arrest. Yeah. And I've seen that and they're relatively inexpensive. And it's filled up with a gas that can be used. Well, I mean, it was like 30 bucks. Oh, yeah, it's not bad. Yeah, I thought you're gonna be like compared to a new Volvo. Well, that's what I thought a lightning arrestor sounded and it was filled with gas that diffuses the charge. I thought it'd be like 10,000 bucks. But no, even with gas prices today. That's right. So we talked about types of lightning. We should probably talk about lightning

rods at some point, like maybe now. So do you know Ben Franklin actually invented these things? I went and double checked. I was like, this sounds like four year old textbook stuff. Yeah, but it's true, isn't it? And I also remembered, oh, wait, like his kite experiment, he ripped off a couple of Frenchmen. I went and check that out. And no, actually, he Franklin had conducted some sort of experiments and possibly proposed the kite experiment. Oh, yeah. And these Frenchmen, he published his results in the early 1750s and a couple of Frenchmen, like carried them out. So the Frenchmen actually did do this. But Ben Franklin did develop lightning rods as early as like the 1740s, I believe. But he did have a kite key experiment, right? He did. Okay. I don't know

if it's not 100% certain that he actually carried out the key on the kite experiment or just said, you know, this theoretically could work. It's a thought experiment. Don't be so stupid to go do this. Well, let's call that lightning myth number three. Okay. And here's some retro active lightning for that one and thunder. Whoa. All right, but he did develop the lightning rod. And basically, a lightning rod is a metal rod on the roof of a building that is attached to a metal wire that runs into the ground. And its job is to either divert that direct lightning strike into the ground and diffuse it quickly, or if it's jumping around to collect that and diffuse it. So it doesn't cause like super lots of damage to the Chrysler building. Right. But it doesn't

attract lightning. It says, Hey, lightning, I got a positive streamer, and I'm not going to resist you at all. Just take me. And the lightning will be like, Hey, you look pretty good. And there you go. But it doesn't attract lightning. And I know the article says that's nitpicking, but it's really not. No, there's not a difference between offering a good path of least resistance to lightning and attracting it. Yeah, because the whoever wrote this article, who was this? I don't know. I'd never, I didn't recognize the name. I think it's an old article basically said the lightning is going to be happening anyway. Yeah. So it's not like it's going to cause lightning to strike there. So that made a lot of sense. They also made a pretty good point that because lightning

rods conduct electricity so well, that makes them that they're not going to be singed or burned or whatever. That it's when you resist that lightening burns you. Right. So like if lightning strikes the like the wood of a house, then it the woods not a very good conductor, which means it's going to be a high amount of burn and heat damage. Right. Because of resistance produces this heat energy. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. What else do we have? Do we have another lightning myth? Man, they are just coming hard and fast these days. Well, we saved them. All right, lightning myth number four. The fairy day cage, right? Yeah. So you are in a car. Yeah. And it's a lightning storm. You've actually sought shelter in a car. It's a good move. Good move. Yeah. And most people think that's

because the tires on the car are touching the ground and they're rubber. Yeah. And they're a good insulator. That's true. In a lightning storm, rubber actually becomes pretty conductive, especially when it's struck by lightning. Yeah. But if your car is struck by lightning, you should be fairly protected because of this thing called the fairy day cage named after Michael Faraday, the early electrical genius from I think the 18th century. Yeah. I think he's the one that first described what an electrical field is, period. Yeah. He was just a very smart guy. The fact that he didn't die of electrocution is really something. That means he's super smart. But he realized that if you put something in a metal cage and apply an electrical charge current to the cage, what's inside

the cage will be fine because electricity passes along the outside of the metal cage. The fairy day cage, well, engineers incorporate that into automobile design. So it's a pretty good place to seek shelter. Yeah. You don't want to be laying naked on the hood of your car. No. But being inside your car would be a pretty good place to be. Yeah. It has nothing to do with your tires, though. Don't be a dummy. And I guess that's our first tip if we're going to give some lightning tips. If you are out and about and if you're driving around Kansas, I don't know why, God forbid you would be doing anything like that. But stay in your car or get in your car. Yeah. If you don't have a car, don't go under a tree. Don't go climb the flagpole. Right.

They say to put your feet close together and crouch down to the ground. Yes. But keep your head as low to the ground as you can get it without touching the ground. Don't let anything but the bottom of your shoes touch the ground. Yeah. Because when lightning strikes, it sends an electrical current across the ground as well. Right? Yeah. So if your head happens to be touching all of a sudden, you've just had a stroke or some sort of neurological damage because you just got struck by lightning. Party under arrest at the very least. Yeah. But also, if you are crouched down, you're providing less of a chance to create a positive streamer with your body. Right. So you want to find shelter. And if you can't find shelter, you want to crouch down, keep your head low,

but not touching the ground. Right. And also, there's a study in Japan, Chuck, Chuck, that found that once you hear thunder, there is no safe interval where you're not vulnerable to a direct lightning strike. By the time you hear thunder, it's already there. Yeah. It's already too late. You could be struck by lightning in any second. So there's no warning sound then? No. No. And you also want to get out of pools because they are really good at conducting electricity. Yeah. Don't stand around in water. No. It's not a good idea. Stay off the telephone. If you still have a telephone that's plugged into a cord on a wall. Yeah. If you buy things that have the as seen on TV label, stay off the phone. I mean, you're also in Kansas too, interestingly.

And they say, you know, stay out of the bathtub. A, because it's got water, but one of the other reasons, if you're in an older house, your plumbing pipes are going to be pretty good conductors and attractors of that electricity. If you're in a newer house, it's probably PVC. Right, exactly. So if you didn't skimp when you redid your house, you might have paid for copper. Yeah, it's true. You really want to remember. Or you should just be like, let's just not take a bath or shower while there's a lightning storm. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I

would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist in Elm

Morton in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop trains. I'm just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm going to end up and I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle on the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come

with me to find out what waits for us in the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts or cityoftherails.com. And then I guess is that it for the lighting myths too? I think so. I have no more little factoids on my sheet either. I've got one. All right, let's hear it. Chironopathy. It's the study of lightning's effects on the human body, the study of the pathology of lightning. Was this the NASA thing? It was mentioned in there. Isn't that cool though? Like talk about a specialized field, like not the effects of electricity on the human body, the effects of lightning striking the human body. Did they study people like Sullivan?

I imagine he saw Chironopathy or two. I bet you, like he had to have become more susceptible, right? Like is that possible? I don't know. I think it could be a lightning myth that we might not dispel at this time. I mean, I would think if the guy got, I mean, granted, he was a park ranger, so he's out there at least. You mentioned the Stetson hat having a burn. So despite the fact that like lightning is six times hotter than the sun, produces heat six times hotter than the sun, heats the air to like 18,000 degrees, causing it to explode, it can still hit a human. And the only burn wounds typically are at the point of entry and the point of exit. How does it not kill people all the time? I don't know. The one thing that

they say is possible. The one possible explanation is that it happens so fast that it doesn't have the same amount of time that like an industrial electrocution has. Interesting. And remember the hysterical strength thing. Do you want to tell them why people are thrown with electricity? That's right. It's not the actual blast. It's the surge of adrenaline. It's so great that you have this superhuman strength and sort of leap back from it. Your muscles contract so hard and so fast that you throw yourself. Yeah, that's crazy. With lightning, I don't think that's true. I think the shockwave can actually throw you. You know, my grandfather, that eventually led to his death. He was an electrician. Oh, yeah. I think I might have told the story and he was at

the top of a thing and used to test electricity with the back of your hand so it doesn't latch on. Oh, yeah. And it popped him out. He hit a live wire and it knocked him out of a telephone pole and he landed on his head. Oh, man. And it was like bedridden for the rest of his life. And oh, man. Yeah. Are you serious? I did not know that. Yeah. Wow. That was a Granddaddy Bryant. I was a little kid. I mean, he died when I was like six. So all I ever knew of him was he was kind of this big scary guy in a hospital bed. Gotcha. Yeah. Who gave you candy? Yeah. Candy and like buffalo nickels. Well, okay. That was a bummer way to end this one. Yeah. Let's see. You got any other terrible stories? No. Okay. Well, then let's go to listener mail. Oh, wait.

First, I didn't even say how stuff works. What is wrong with me? If you want to see some very pretty lightning pictures and read more about lightning, you can just type that in. This is like a seminal article for how stuff works. Yeah. It's like bread and butter stuff. Lightning, search bar, howstuffworks.com. Now it's time for listener mail. Josh and we call this email I just received, you know, 10 minutes ago. Oh, okay. Hot off the presses. Guys in Jerry have been wanting to write for ages and now I actually have things to say. I've been listening to the podcast for years and I've probably listened to 99% of them and never listened to the few in the beginning before you two teamed up. Oh, that's pretty nice. Yeah. I learned so much from them. Your podcast is the

reason I survived mowing lawns for a summer without my brain becoming mush from the endless walking back and forth. What I really want to write and say, though, is thanks for helping me get into my college. My main essay for applying to colleges was about your podcast. I entitled it Healthcare to Zoot Zoot. And I talked all about the things I'd learned from your podcast, hoping it would show the colleges that I was curious, well rounded and had a thirst for knowledge. Nice. Apparently it worked because I was accepted to several colleges. Now we'll be a freshman at St. Olaf College next year, next fall. I don't know if they have a team. St. Olaf, they're like the fighting roses from Golden Girls. Really? That's where rose from Golden Girls is from St. Olaf.

Really? Yeah. I didn't watch Golden Girls. What? I had, I don't know. It didn't. It's not too late. Still on lifetime every day as far as I know. Really? All right, so Aaron M. from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Congratulations for getting into St. Olaf College. Jesus, thanks for the inspiration. That is awesome. And good luck in college. It's going to be great. It only gets better from there, in my opinion. Yeah. Life aging. Agreed. But then it starts to go down. But that'll be a while. I thought that was like 50 when that happened. Yeah, well, we'll see. Okay, so congratulations Aaron. If you are someone who has used us to further your own agenda, say like getting into college or getting a date or whatever, we want to hear that kind of story. You can tweet to us

at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again. So I followed her into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. And into the city of the rails. There I found a surprising world so brutal and beautiful that it changed me. But the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there and if you want to play with the devil you're going to find them there in the rail yard. I'm Denelle Morton. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails.

Listen to city of the rails on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast or cityoftherails.com.