Eli5: what would a vessel need to be made out of in order to capture lightning? Can lighting be captured?

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Just wondering if the saying “capture lightning in a bottle” could be literal.

In: Physics

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

AFAIK the best (only) way to do this would be to build a bottle-shaped, gigantic battery. This thing would have to put tesla batteries to shame.

Connect it to a lightning rod via a lot of transformers and whatnot (so as to avoid blowing it up), and then wait for the lightning.

If you wanted a bottle with little lightning bolts inside it, you might be able to get that effect if you take a double walled bottle and line the outer side of the interior wall with tiny wires and equally tiny tesla coils. Maybe.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Well youtube has fun videos on how to make plasma.

do not use your home microwave. My roommate and I had to live off a charcoal grill for a month after we blew ours up 🙂

Anonymous 0 Comments

Lightning is electricity jumping from one location to another. You could capture the energy but not the lightning.

Think of it like capturing wind…. What kind of bottle would you need to capture wind? You can capture the air, but it’s not wind anymore.