Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Lightning rods. Was: Protecting com
Message-ID: <1988Jul25.163404.18143@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <6179@aw.sei.cmu.edu> <44000015@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 16:34:04 GMT

In article <44000015@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk> william@pyr1.cs.ucl.ac.uk writes:
>If this were not the case, then lightning conductors would not stick into
>the air, because this positively encourages a local discharge. A church,
>forinstance, would have a metal plate, as unpointed as possible, on its
>spire, so as to discourage discharge but still provide a path to ground.

Ah, but if you do get a local discharge, you want to be very sure it goes
into the rod, not the building frame.  So there is still a reason for
trying to make the rod conspicuous to the lightning.
-- 
MSDOS is not dead, it just     |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
smells that way.               | uunet!mnetor!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu