this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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So how in the ever loving fuck can someone survive a strike???
Does the lighting not actually make contact and it's more like an arc of sorts?
If you put a single drop of boiling water in the palm of your hand you'll be fine. If you pour a cup of boiling water in the palm of your hand you might need to go to urgent care.
Lightning superheats the air around it, but not in a sustaining way. Given the speed of the discharge the heat of a strike isn't necessarily fatal.
There are indirect strikes where lightning hits near you and electricity flows back up through your body, but direct strikes can also be survived.
Skin effect if I'm not wrong, and other effect that with more voltage, less of that voltage enter the object, so with a fucking strike only your outer layer of your skin get fucked, I watched this in a styropyro video so I don't remember exactly
https://xkcd.com/90/