For the first Video on the RADHUNTER YouTube Channel, I introduce the Mestek EMF02R EMF, E-Field, B-Field meter, and demonstrate it detecting a Lightning Strike miles from my home.
Obviously, it would have been more impressive if the storms on that day would have had more frequent and more intense lightning. In fact I have monitored lightning with the Mestek EMF02R on a more active day, but unfortunately I was not prepared to record it that day.
Where did the “Five Second Rule” mentioned in the video come from? So using so-called “Imperial” units, sound (including of course the sound of thunder) travels at about 767 miles per hour (MPH). If we divide 767 by the 60 minutes in an hour, we find that sound travels at 12.8 miles per minute. If we again divide 12.8 by 60 (There are 60 seconds in a minute), we get 0.21 miles per second, or very close to a mile every 1/5 (0.20) of a second. So counting 5 seconds means that the thunder has traveled 1 mile from the location of the strike to our ears.
In fact, 5 seconds is actually a little better (for a change) than the pure math gets us to. When I was very young, I learned the speed of sound as 741 MPH, which is generally accepted as the speed of sound at sea level on a cold, dry day. So someplace in between 741 and 767 gets us exactly at a mile every 5 seconds.
Here’s another point — even if somewhat trivial: The Electric Field does not arrive at the sensors of the EMF02R instantly either. For calculation purposes, we will assume that the E-Field, which is Electromagnetic Radiation just like Light, travels at the same speed — the speed of light or c. So the E-Field from a lightning strike 2.6 miles away takes about 14 μs (microseconds) to reach the EMF02R — That’s not very long, but it’s not zero either. For example, in 14 microseconds the microprocessor in a mid-level mobile phone can execute anywhere from a few hundred thousand to several million program instructions — and that’s without any help from the Graphics Processor (GPU).
Here is a final point that I had to deal with many times in my career in aerospace. Lightning may hit the ground (or a structure) at a certain point, but the strike is never a straight vertical line. Lightning can travel sideways, or approach from a low angle over a distance of several miles. It also follows a very erratic path. A strike traveling overhead, and then striking a point past the observer is going to register a much larger reading on the Mestek EMF02R, than a strike that approaches the observer’s location from past the point where the strike hits the ground or a structure, in other words, a strike that does not pass over the observer (assuming approximately equal energy lightning strikes.) The strongest E-Field will generally occur from the closest point to the Mestek EMF02R along the lightning strike’s flight path. When discussing the E-Field strength (and thus the potential for damage to, and/or interference with, a spacecraft) I constantly struggled to get engineering management to stop over-simplifying lightning as a perfectly straight and vertical column of coulombs. The relatively low reading on the EMF02R, and the location of storm cells at the time, indicate that the strike captured in the video did not pass over my location.
Please note that videos relating to Ionizing Radiation Devices are currently hosted on the @CarCynic YouTube Channel. Future videos relating to Ionizing or Non-Ionizing Radiation will be found on the Official RADHUNTER.COM YouTube Channel.