How do lightning rods work?

Question

Do they attract lightening so they don't hit the building. Do they make buildings less attractive to lightening?

Answer 1

Lighting rods do both. A lighting rod will discharge the air around them and lessen the chance of lighting striking them but if the charge is large enough the lighting will discharge in a controlled manner through the lighting rod and into the ground without doing damage.

What is strange today is that very few people use lighting rods.

Answer 2

How Do Lightning Rods Work

Answer 3

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Because lightning is a natural phenomenon. I'm going to be really presumptuous and put myself in God's place for just a moment: if I were going to create a universe, with a little blue dot of a planet at the middle of it all, I would probably want to set it up so it runs itself, and all I have to do is tweak it a little from time to time to keep it running according to my plans for it. I don't want to have to hover over it and blow every time there should be some wind somewhere, or have to constantly shift around clouds, or create each and every living thing that is born or hatches every day -- I still created it and take credit for everything that happens, but I don't want to have to micromanage it. So things happen on earth that are still my will, but that I don't have to make happen. So now consider lightning. We know how it is formed, and the physics behind it. We also know that most of the time, lightning actually travels only from cloud to cloud, and a goodly percentage of the time, it hits inanimate objects or trees. Why? Is God punishing sinful trees? Or is it just random? I'd say it's just random, and it's only prudent to put lightning rods on the Vatican to protect the buildings and their inhabitants from random natural phenomena -- if God chooses to smite someone in or near the Vatican, I'm pretty sure He is capable of finding a way to make a lightning bolt strike the poor slob no matter how many lightning rods he's under, or find some other way of doing the sinner in. In other words, if lightning only strikes sinners, then what about the people who get struck by lightning and survive? Did God miss? Heaven forbid!

Answer 4

I think lightning rods work simply on the basic concept of opposites attract. I think they are positively charged, while lightning is negatively charged. Because they are high and pointed at the top, they can easliy attract the negatively charged lightning once it forms. The charge is then carried through the rod and grounded in the earth.

Hope this helps.. Peace,

Karan S

Answer 5

<>Lightening can travel in either direction- up or down (actually, it is theorized that the majority of lighting travels up). Most of the destruction is caused when lightning strikes down, because it seeks the easiest path to ground and if that is through a tree, a person, or a house- oh, well! The idea of a lightning rod is to provide a convenient, easy, and accessible path-to-ground for electricity to protect whatever might get hit otherwise.

Answer 6

Lightning rods have sharp points. When a charge cloud comes in the vicinity of a sharp point, it tends to discharge. This is the whole principle by which a L.rod works. It takes the sting out of the clouds.

Answer 7

Lightning believe it or not travels up to the clouds and not down to the ground. It happens so fast that it is hardly discernable by the naked eye. By raising the negative ground upwards, the distance travelled is less and does not pass through the structure resulting in fire or other damage. The theory is to allow the charge to pass around the building. Hope this helps.

Discovery channel, also live in the Lightning capitol of the US, Sunny Florida

Answer 8

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
How do lightning rods work?
Do they attract lightening so they don't hit the building. Do they make buildings less attractive to lightening?

Answer 9

They was a con invented by Irish travelers to sell to unsuspecting farmers as a must have to install on high roof barns.

Answer 10

this link will give u some details
http://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning9.htm