Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1895 — Lightning's Power. [ARTICLE]

Lightning's Power.

Professor Hoppe reports in the “Ardilv fur Post sttd Telegraphic,” a new example of the mechanical power of a lightning discharge. In a storm that raged at Klausthal, In the Hartz mountains, a bolt entering a house struck a wooden post on whose top two metallic nails one-sixth of an inch in diameter were melted. No forge coaid have effected this; to bring It about, an electric current 'of 200 amperes Intensity and 20,000 volts tension must have passed through the nails. Supposing that the action of the lightning lasted a second, the dynamic power thus developed was eqnal to 5,000 horse power, but if, as is much more probable, the discharge lasted only one-tenth of a second, we get a rate of work that does not fall short of 50,000 horse power.