Eli5: How high voltage (lightning, HV charged metal sphere) discharge to earth without earthing, while battery requires both terminal to complete circuit?
In: 3
Lightning actually happens _during_ earthing. What happens is the clouds are very highly charged, the ground is very not charged, and the air between the clouds and the ground provides some amount of resistance. At a certain point the difference between the charge in the clouds and the 0 charge at the ground gets so high that it can overcome the resistance of the air and all the charge blasts to earth and lightning happens. The circuit is temporarily complete. Batteries don’t have nearly that amount of charge so you need stuff with way less resistance, like wires, to discharge. They also store their charge potential chemically so it’s only theoretically electricity until you complete that circuit. But conceivably if you managed to find 2 chemicals and metals with enough potential they could discharge from the + side to the – side through the air just like clouds (+) discharge to the ground (-) through the air.
Latest Answers