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Thread: Would this actually work (xkcd comic's instructions for elaborate jewelry making)

  1. #1
    Elephant
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    Default Would this actually work (xkcd comic's instructions for elaborate jewelry making)

    Hurh,

    I thought about it and I have a few questions about both the science behind the feasibility of such a project and the practical issues regarding it.

    The Glass Necklace

    First off:

    In theory, could it work?

    Of course, glass can be made by lightning hitting sand. Image Link. I've seen nicer looking specimens myself, but that's what google gave me.

    The question, I guess, which I will assume is yes, would lightning be attracted to something which the conductivity, thanks to the break and the fact the lightning has to go through the sand, is lower than many other things (i.e., anything with a higher conductivity than sand) that is below? And if so, could this be negated by the distance the balloon is up in the air?

    And can temperature of whatever the container is could be raised to a sufficient level so that the lightning going through the sand is unnecessary?

    Practically, would lightning just destroy anything like a container it finds? I could definitely see under the extremes just about anything you put in a container under those temps just blowing to bits.

    And, if there is a way this is possible, what measurements of different ingredients besides sand would be ideal? I don't know if there would be a difference in materials, but we're not talking normal glass making.


    I don't know why I'm thinking about this, someone e-mailed me an earlier comic and I clicked forward several times and came to that.



    I should probably start a poll in the opinions forum on my level of geekiness on a scale of 1-10 for even thinking about posting a series of questions like this.

  2. #2
    Elephant
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    Default Re: Would this actually work (xkcd comic's instructions for elaborate jewelry making)

    Glass can be made from melted sand. I suspect lightning produces enough heat to melt sand in a way that could form a jewel-like item.
    A jewel from ancient Egypt has been identified as melted sand from a meteor impact, so it’s not inconceivable.
    I do not bite my thumb at you, but I bite my thumb.

  3. #3
    Member
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    Default Re: Would this actually work (xkcd comic's instructions for elaborate jewelry making)

    Yeah, fulgurites happen all the time, and pretty impressive ones can even be made from artificial discharges. But what about the balloon method in particular?

    I don't think the relative non-conductivity of the sand matters much. You don't want to have enough energy to melt a ton of steel all going through a little blob of sand, anyway. The container would have to be designed so as to shunt most of the current around the target, like a lightning rod. (At any rate, the mixture would have to be totally dry, or all you'd get is a vapor explosion. Not just dried-dry, but absolutely-hermetically-sealed-crystal-water-free-dry.)

    Fulgurites are practically formed at the boundary between too much and too little. You can't predict how far into the sand this boundary is going to be, but you know there will be a boundary when the lightning dissipates out into the ground. Unlike with an isolated container, where it seems very difficult to hit the fine line juuust right, between sufficient resistive heating, and blowing it all up in a ball of plasma.

    I see the whole balloon and container thing as pretty counterproductive.

    There are researchers who fire little rockets into the sky, trailing a thin wire as a seed. Sometimes they catch a lightning bolt. http://www.lightning.ece.ufl.edu/

    It's just as easy (or difficult) to attract lightning to a particular spot on the ground and disperse it there. Why send a fragile container up? Do this where you have control over keeping the whole mess from blowing apart.

    But where's the looove in that?

  4. #4
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    Default Re: Would this actually work (xkcd comic's instructions for elaborate jewelry making)

    I remember near the end of the movie Sweet Home Alabama where one of the main characters was putting metal rods into the sand before a storm to catch lightning. Don't remember how it ended.

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