Re: Lightning strike with lessons for bicyclist

On Jul 12, 2:21 pm, John Henderson <jhenRemoveT...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Don Mackie wrote:
Essentially agree... as you say, wearing insulating shoes (say)
reduces the likelihood of you being hit. But depends on many other
variables such as what else is around and, again, does not eliminate
possibility of strike.

I'm not convinced that the relatively tiny amount of insulation
provided by shoes is any help at all.

In fact, I remember reading an article decades ago which
suggested that the opposite might be true - at least in some
circumstances.  That's basically because a person wearing shoes
in a thunderstorm-induced intense electric field should be
regarded as a charged capicitor.

Even if true, how is that supposed to make the insulated person more
likely to be struck? A charged capacitor has equal and opposite
charges on its plates - as seen from a distance large compared to the
capacitor itself it therefore looks like an electrically neutral
object but with a fairly weak dipole field. This is in contrast to
objects such as trees that are well grounded to the earth and acquire
a large unbalanced charge opposite (and therefore attractive) to the
electrically charged cloud above. That makes the grounded object the
more tempting target if other factors are roughly equal.
.

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