Order of the Bath

Another item on the early morning news to make me leap out of bed and shout “Rubbish!”

Some doctor was claiming that using a mobile phone in a storm makes you more likely to be struck by lightning. Just think about this objectively, e.g. from the point of view of the lightning. The desire of the excess charge is to find the path of least resistance to earth. Holding an object to your ear, whether metal or not, is not going to make the slightest difference to that. Maybe in the early days of mobiles when they had long extendible aerials, yes but not now. Had any one thought that a girl standing in a field in the pouring rain might be a lightning rod in her own right regardless of the phone? So, yes, using a mobile phone is likely to make you do stupid things, but we knew that already.

The story did have one shocking effect though, it got me out of bed. perhaps that is what these stories are for!

(Note: the story linked to above from the BBC web site is much more balanced and makes more sense than the radio sound bite version. It is talking about the internalising of the injuries which is more believable)

This entry was posted on 23 Jun 2006 at 08:33 by Rick and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.