Something Different

seen something like this elsewhere, the only thing that worries me is woods lack of earthing ablility.

That's what people are for????????

Wood will conduct lightning!, what are you worried about!!.

Actually, wood doesn't.

Tell that to the 3 or 4 people who got fried under an old wooden bandstand in Geelong some years ago...

Bryan

Put enough volts across it and it certainly will.

Its not the wood thats doing the conducting.

Yes it is.

Oh, I'm sorry, it must be the carbon ions forming a conductive plasma as the cellulose is explosively vapourised.Either you know something about dielectric physics you aren't telling us or you are being a nitpicking dickhead.

So pray tell what it is that does the conducting?

And don't say electrons, because by that logic metals wouldn't be considered conductors.

Me thinks you should go back to physics and chem 101. Or maybe better, go back and start in say... year 10 or 11.

Bryan

There aren't too many laptop cases with any earthing ability anyway. I don't think that the plastic case on my Dell would conduct too much.

Anyway, if you're that worried, you could just hammer a nail or two into it.

You'll find it was the water that was the conductor, not simply the wood.

McGrath wrote

Wrong with dry wood.

wood.

Dry wood is an insulator - not a conductor. For the purpose of earthing - which is where this started, wood has NO conducive conductive abilities.

McGrath wrote

Depends entirely on the level of voltage applied, just like with any insulator.

Irrelevant to where it diverged to.

Pity about the situation that it diverged to.

Lets see , Carbon is used in low voltage batteries , wow with only 1.5 volts present . TTL is 5 volts . Man , now Im worried !!!

And you should be. Carbon is used in some cells. With carbon/zinc or alkaline you get the 1.5 V you sprout about.

A battery is a number of cells connected in series and / or parallel

How you manage to get from the voltage of a lightning strike to a carbon/zinc cell is quite a step.

ps still think a file is created when cloning a disk ???

Well in the context of grounding a laptop, wood is useless and would act as an insulator. In the context of the 'bandstand' incident, water was the conductor - NOT wood.

In both instatnces wood was/is not a conductor.

Somehow we diverged to the Geelong incident. The lightning was conducted by water from the thunderstorm - not the wood.

Which was the situation where water was the main conductive substance - NOT the wood. You said wood was doing the conducting - it wasn't.

Its an option