Electricity from Lightning
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 November 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is it possible to get power from lightning? This was the first CrowdScience question posed by listener John Emochu in Kampala, Uganda.
Presenter Marnie Chesterton goes hunting for the answer at a lightning lab in Cardiff, Wales. What is a lightning lab? And how was she able to make a tiny – but very loud – lightning bolt? Marnie also discovers humanity's early history with lightning, how aeroplanes are protected from lightning strikes, and where the greatest number of thunderstorms occur in the world.
With contributions from John Emochu, Rhys Phillips, Chris Stone, Rachel Albrecht, Shaaron Jimenez and Manu Haddad.
Picture: Photograph of lightning from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Credit: Eric Vance, EPA
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello podcast listeners thank you for downloading this this being crowd science the newest show from the BBC World Service I'm |
| 0:08.1 | Marnie Chesterton I'm your presenter and I'd like to introduce you to producer Jen say hello Jen |
| 0:13.9 | Hello I'm Marley's bossy producer. Now crowd science takes your questions each week about |
| 0:19.6 | life the universe and everything in between to the four corners of the earth. |
| 0:24.6 | Petant note there are no actual corners. |
| 0:26.9 | Good point, thanks Jen. |
| 0:28.2 | In order to find answers. |
| 0:30.3 | This week, Lightning. |
| 0:32.3 | Here's the show. |
| 0:35.0 | Hello, I'm John and I'm calling the crowd science team at the BBC World Service from Kampala in Uganda with a question. |
| 0:41.0 | I would like to know something about electricity. Can we tap it from |
| 0:44.4 | lightning? Is it possible to get usable electricity from a lightning strike? Good question John. John. |
| 0:53.0 | Here at crowd science your message got us wondering too. |
| 1:06.0 | And since this show tries to answer your questions on life, Earth and the universe |
| 1:12.0 | by heading to experts all over the world we need to find |
| 1:16.2 | some lightning scientists. |
| 1:19.7 | I'm Marnie Chesterton I can't say my name. |
| 1:25.0 | That's Marnie Chesterton. I'm producer Jen. |
| 1:30.0 | And we're on a mission to answer John's question, can we collect electricity from lightning? |
| 1:35.6 | Where are we heading, Jen? |
| 1:36.6 | We're off to Wales in the UK. |
| 1:38.6 | And more specifically? |
... |
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