Growing up, I was told to exit the pool when there was rain. It makes sense- relatively small volume of water + significant voltage can conclude pool day pretty quick.
But what about the ocean? If water conducts electricity, how does lightning not spread to every beach all the time?
In: 7
Electricity, radiation, heat, lots of other forms of energy transfer all attenuate as the inverse square of distance. Near the lightning strike all that electric current travels through a small volume to a larger shell of water surrounding the small volume, then from that shell to the next shell out, and so on. The current density is equal to the current divided by the cross sectional area of the shell. Like an onion, the farther away from the middle you get, the larger the shell area gets. When you get far enough away from the strike location the cross sectional area is so large that the current density is practically zero.
On top of the inverse square attenuation, some of the energy changes from electrical energy to heat along every increment of distance.
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