miketsp
Contributor
Marcosis:..snip..
My question is... What would lightning do to a diver under water or waiting to board a boat and are you safe from it's effects at a certain depth?
I've wondered about this but have not asked as to not sound like an idiot.
Thanks for any info! Marc
It's not a stupid question. Many people have difficulty visualising concepts like 3 dimensional voltage gradient vectors in a homogeneous medium or what causes skin effect when a high frequency pulse tries to propagate in a conductor.
freediver:I won't speculate, I'll just have you read this.
Just a couple of comments on the article.
"It's not clear how far lightning travels through water."
The calculation is not that difficult, the problem is to parameterize the strike as they vary significantly. If you know the current and the pulse shape, the result can be calculated.
Especially for sea water which is a homogeneous conducting medium.
There are some statistics available on the Internet. In a previous thread on the subject I calculated the voltage gradient across a 2m tall diver to establish a safe depth for various currents.
It was post #22 of
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=113662
However as was pointed out later, this calculation was based on a slow pulse which would have better penetration.
I did run some later simulations using some typical pulse shapes and must admit that skin effect does come into play to a large extent for the majority of strikes so the depths I published really are worst case and the dissipation will normally confine itself to more shallow depths.
See also thread
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=133014