Lightning Radius in Body of Water

OK i've got a question relating to this, say you put an electrical cord in the ocean how far will you feel that?

Originally posted by Beer_Guy
I wondered if maybe they saw the flash, so I did the same thing in the shadow of a boat and they acted the same way.
It leads me to believe that even though I was standing in the water and felt nothing, the fish did sense the electricity and reacted to it.

Remember, sound travels about 5x faster through water than through air at sea level.

I've seen lots of lightning up close, i've only been hit once, but i've had a lot of close calls. I have seen lightning strike the surface of the water a few times within a couple hunderd yards of where i was. I saw the surface water sorta boil and steam for about 30-50' diameter and a sort of dome shaped shockwave that kept the steam trapped at the water's surface.

each lightning strike has different potential, and also some are positive charges while others are negitive charges.
all this needs to be weighed in to the equation as well.
The positive strike that hit the shuttle on the launch pad last year was huge in voltage and current.
Positive strikes while rare can be huge.
Most strikes are negitive.
Stay alive, play safe, come in from the thunderstorm


[edit on 25-5-2007 by junglelord]

Originally posted by supercrazyman
OK i've got a question relating to this, say you put an electrical cord in the ocean how far will you feel that?

It would depend on the amount of voltage supplied to the cord. I would think that if a lightning strike goes out several hundred feet, then a lower voltage cord would only go into the tens of feet.

It would not last very long though, as the unrestricted flow of amps would blow the fuse or circuit breaker at the power source. What you basically create, when you put a generator straight to ground with little or no resistance, is a short circuit, which is why protection circuits are designed to break the circuit at certain wattage. If there was no protection circuit between the water and the power source, something would still burn out from the wattage (heat) produced by that amount of electrons moving through the components. So it would depend on what the weakest part of the circuit was constructed from. If you had a low rated wire, it would burn/melt, if the windings in the generator were weaker then the generator would catch fire, so on. This is why you have fuses or circuit breakers in your house, so that if something short circuits, the connection breaks before something along the circuit has time to catch fire.

The basics of electricity is Ohm’s law, in it you will find the relationship between the forces of basic electricity: Watts, Volts, Amp’s, Ohm’s.

Volts are the potential difference between to areas.
Ohm’s are the resistance along the path between those two areas, and are the work done.
Amp’s are the flow of electrons which perform the work in the circuit.
Watt’s are the heat produced by that work being done.

Electricians Wheel

Basically though, your Amps= Volts/Ohms, and your Watts = Volts x Amp’s, so you can see that the higher the Voltage, and the less the Resistance, the higher your Amps. Similarly the higher your Voltage, and Amp’s, the higher your Wattage.

Again, I would not suggest playing with water and electricity, if its not already apparently obvious not to do such.