The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1921-07-11
Where Am / Safe From Llghtning9
NoUhere, is Answer of Scientists
Research Unable To Determine Where FiftyBilion Volt
Column of Fire, Mile in Height, is Going
To Srike-One Chance IN Million


offer a protection.
There are the thousand pet aver
sions and precautions which cause
the scientific man to smile. The man
who wears rubbers to insulate him
self may be keeping his feet dry, but
he is not warding off lightning any
more than the old magician who
burned a pinch of magic powder to
drive the devils away Against a
charge that can break down so poor
a conductor as air and use it for a
mile or more, what can avail a quar-
ter of an inch of fabric under foot?
Small Consolation
And even if he were insulated,
what difference would it make if the
100000, 900 volts more or less, were
ordained to strike there? Apparent
ly, the man who puts down his UNI
brella and takes a wetting in the hope
of escaping a shock is making an I'M
necessary sacrifice of himself
1T is remarkable what ideas peo-
pie have about lightning" says one
spark specialist. Take the old saying
that lightning never strikes twice in
the same place. Some men are sure
of it that in a storm they will go to
a place where lightning has struck,
trusting that it will not come there
agin"
A farmer told me that his barn has
been struck five times and burned
down three times. Yet he always
builds it again in the same place. The
barn is by no means the highest point
of ground. His house is more ex-
posed, but the lightning picks the
barn
1t is concluded by all the students
that lightning is the prize freak of
nature 1t knows no rules-or, bet
| ter, man does not yet know its rules.
The difficulty of studying it retards
our knowledge. A researcher will
| go to a locality noted for storms the
! previous year, and when he has set
up all his apparatus there, the next
town, thirty miles away, will be treat
ed to frolic in the skies, as though
! seven million Leyden jars were at
! play. Or he will train his camera on
that part of the clouds where the
| flashes have been disporting them
selves for the last fifteen minutes, and
then find them leaping at his back.
| 1t is not wonder that no more def
| mite results have been obtained when
/ one considers that the nearest the ma
chimes of men can come to reproducing
the five billion volts of a flash, which
| is the Bureau of Standards estimate,
| is a few million volts. Joseph H.
| Krauss, editor of Science and Inven-
ton, has even gone long way toward
reproducing that most puzzling of all
! big electrical phenomena, globe" or
BALI lightning.
Does Much Damage.
! This seems to be produced when
! fork Of lightning strikes in such man.
ner that it is not Immediately conduct
ed away. 1t then forms an mean
| descent ball, which Kisses over the
ground with miraculous speed in an
| irregular course, and is finally dis
'sipated, sometimes with powerful ex-
plosion. 1t may last several seconds,
and in this brief time can do great
damage. 1t has been known, says Mr.
krauss, to bore its way through the
walls of building like bullet.
Lightning is too closely connected
with the emotions and the vestiges of
a remote ancestry to make the data of
the average observed of much value
AS one expert says, lightning must
have frightened our ancient ancestors
almost to death with the fear of the
unknown; and now, although we know
why it is, we are still bounded by that
hereditary fear.
Statistics on Lightning.
The Bureau of Standards gives these
interesting figures: Of 460,S95 fires
| in one year, 5000 were due to light
ming; ~ per cent. of all oil tank fires
were caused by lightning, II per cent.
Of all fires in telephone and telegraph
offices, and % per cent. of all fires in
dwellings and tenements. Barns were
/ found to be more liable to fire from
! lightning than houses.
| The only clear drops than can be
squeezed from all the vintage of ex-
pert wisdom seem to be that the city
man is fairly safe almost anywhere in
his domain, and the suburbanite is
I safest in the middle of his house when
the electric switch is pulled off, and
more so if the house is supplied with
some such continuance as the metal
roof. The danger to the man without
these safeguards is one chance in
millions, and the man with all of them
may be struck, anyway. Natures most
dramatic display of her might leads
inevitably to the amendment of an old
saying: Time and tide and lightning
wait for no man."
VII Ennn nEEIrIAIC