Category Archives: lightning bolt

Catching Lightning With High Voltages And A Kite

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Flying a kite on a stormy day is not the wisest thing to do, except, of course, you’re intentionally trying to catch a lightning bolt. The guys from [kreosan] replicated the famous experiment, with which Benjamin Franklin once set out to prove the electrical nature of lightning.

After their first attempt to attract lightning bolts in a storm by flying a kite attached to a grounded metal wire, which surprisingly did not yield a catch, they came up with an even scarier setup: They hooked up the wire to the high-voltage rail of a well-grounded television tube to bias it …read more

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Google Contest Builds More Efficient Inverters

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A few summers ago, Google and IEEE announced a one million dollar prize to build the most efficient and compact DC to AC inverter. It was called the Little Box Challenge, with the goal of a 2kW inverter with a power density greater than 50 Watts per cubic inch.

To put this goal into perspective, the DC inverter that would plug into a cigarette lighter in your car has a power density of about 1 or 2 Watts per cubic inch. Very expensive inverters meant for solar installations have a power density of about 5 Watts per cubic inch. This …read more

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