Hi this is Diana.

You're watching Physics Girl.

And this is my dad, Bill.

You're an unusual man.

Well, I certainly have an unusual daughter.

I guess that's fair.

So do you know what I want to ask you about?

I do.

What is that?

It's about lightning, and my experiences with lightning.

The first one was when I was probably-- Wait, Dad-- wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

What, is your experience with lightning?

I was hit.

By lightning.

By lightning, yeah.

Twice.

Yes.

Not like bolt to the head?

Not like bolt to the head, no-- close enough that it had a direct impact on me.

Tell me about the first experience.

What did it feel like?

What was the situation?

I was, I think, about 12 years old.

And I was swimming in the lake one afternoon, when a thunderstorm came toward us at the other end of the lake, which was probably about seven miles long.

And some lightning hit the water from quite a distance.

And we could feel tingling in the water.

And we decided, at that point, we probably ought to get out of the water.

So I was walking up through the pines to go home.

And then everything went black.

And I woke up probably an hour and a half later.

Wow.

And the tree was still smoking from the bolt that had come down the tree.

So lightning hit the tree?

Yes.

And some of it probably went through you?

Some of it probably did.

Yeah.

So you woke up next to the tree-- Yes.

- -and was the moment you decided to become a tree farmer.

Ha, ha, ha.

He really is a tree farmer.

It's true.

But it's pretty significant when you're just suddenly standing, and suddenly you're not.

I felt strange when I woke up.

I was dizzy, and I couldn't remember what happened.

I couldn't even remember walking up from the lake.

What did it feel like the second time you were hit by lightning?

Because he was hit twice!

I was probably 35 years old.

I decided, since it was thunder storming outside, I would do something in my garage underneath the house.

There was a large tree 20 feet from the garage.

And the bolt came down the tree-- A tree again!

A tree again.

I was bent over.

And it caused an involuntary muscular situation, where my whole body straightened out.

Everything went up like-- and I had no control whatsoever over that happening.

Wow.

It was just very similar to what happened to me, once, when I made the dumb mistake of crossing a 220 with a screwdriver.

You would.

I would.

And I did.

But the electricity causes this involuntary movement of your muscles.

And it's just-- Right.

You can't even control it.

First, I want to show you a little experiment we did.

OK. DIANA: So it's an experiment to show how lightning forms.

So we made it from PVC pipe.

And you just charge it up by rubbing PVC pipe on this metal sphere.

And then-- Whoah.

Did you see that?

Yes.

Does this-- does it bring back some memories?

Ha, ha, ha.

That's a pretty good arc.

It's a pretty good arc, right?

I may have a video next week on how to make this set up.

You just stay tuned.

But then, we wanted to show, you know, what that jolt might do to a person.

And so we made a little ham man.

A ham man!

105 00:03:18,270 --> 00:03:18,960 Right.

Look closely, because there it was.

108 00:03:23,930 --> 00:03:24,900 He looks OK.

The whole point of doing this shocking demo was to sort of replicate lightning, but also to figure out why lightning is so dangerous.

So there are a few key differences between actually getting struck by lightning and shocking ham man.

For one thing, when you get hit by lightning, it doesn't necessarily drop a bolt right down on your head.

In fact, a lightning bolt is only about an inch wide.

So to get that spark, we charged up the bowl to about a couple hundred thousand volts-- which sounds scary and life threatening, but it's not.

And here's the reason why-- the difference between voltage and current.

I like to think of it like standing under a waterfall.

In order for the water to knock you over, you need-- one-- for the waterfall to be tall, meaning it needs to have a lot of gravitational potential energy to start with-- and two-- a lot of water flowing.

Electric charges are similar.

The higher voltage, the more potential energy each charge has.

And then the higher current means more charges are flowing.

Our metal bowl demo had a really high potential energy-- that is a high voltage-- but it's kind of hard to get a lot of charges on there using the paper towel method.

So it had a low current.

I mean, don't get me wrong.

It's not fun to get shocked by that thing.

It's like getting spit on by someone from the top of the Empire State Building.

Being hit by lightning would be like standing under Niagara Falls.

It's got volume and height.

So that's high current and high voltage.

A lightning bolt has tens of thousands of amps of current and millions of volts, compared to our couple hundred thousand.

So your heart is especially susceptible to lightning, because your heart is a muscle, too.

What a workout it is to love.

So the electricity of the lightning can kill you by messing your heartbeat up so much that it stops working.

A lot of people have described that feeling of their muscles locking up, and like not being able to control their muscles anymore.

Zero control, right?

Yeah.

And you're lucky, because other people have described their mood and their personality changing after lightning strikes.

If you survive a lightning strike, you might also end up getting these eerie pink patterns on your arm that look like branches.

They're called Lichtenberg figures, and they're the same patterns that lightning makes when it strikes wood.

So in conclusion, it's not a great idea to get hit by lightning.

So what should you do if you're in a lightning storm?

Some tips for lightning storms.

Don't-- don't-- don't be next to a tree.

Don't be near a tree.

So typically, being inside a building, or inside a car, are very safe.

I mean you may feel the lightning, as in your situation.

But you have to be really careful not to touch the outside of the car, though.

Because with a Faraday cage, the lightning will travel along the outside.

So even if you're inside of a car, and you happen to touch, maybe, some of the metal parts of your car or the outside of the car, well, you can draw it through your party.

Boating is where most lightning deaths occur-- like being out on the open water.

So it was good I got out of the water, right?

It's good you got out of the water.

Absolutely.

Good job.

So to all the surfers that stay in the water when there's lightning storms, get out of the water!

Avoid open areas.

This is kind of morbid.

But in a group, spread out so that the chances of survivors are higher, and you can come to the aid of some of the other people that might get hit.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

I never would have thought of that.

Any last words?

This was fun.

It was fun.

It was fun.

Having a meaningful conversation with my daughter.

Aww.

Come here daddy.

Come here.

There it is.

He got hit by lightning twice.

Thank you so much for watching this video.

Subscribe for more physics.

Remember to go indoors during a lightning storm.

And happy physicsing!

Pound it.

[MUSIC PLAYING] 219 00:07:30,150 --> 00:07:32,170 Dad, do you know what YouTube is?

I've heard of it.