Beyond Franklin’s Kite
When scientists at Hydro-Quebec, one of Canada’s largest power companies, want to see how a piece of electrical equipment holds up under the blast of a lightning bolt -- which can go as high as 300,000 amperes -- they plop it down in the middle of a field during a thunderstorm in Florida, the most lightning-prone part of North America. They place a rocket containing a spool of wire cable next to the test object; when launched, the wire unrolls to create a short-lived connection between...
Photonics Spectra, November 1999