Sunday, November 3, 2013

electrical arc



These video dimensions are guesses. Eh, it looks about right. 

Noticed this on theblaze.com where a Reddit editor is quoted explaining in technical terms how such a thing happens. The Blaze picked up the item from Gawker, so a real circular internet thing going on, I'll bet if I click over at least one comment on Gawker will resent Gawker picking up content from Reddit, they do that at Gizmodo. 

The Reddit editor's one-paragraph explanation has great technical vocabulary in it, it was fun to read. 
high impedance electrical arcing fault
upstream protective device fuse, relay/breaker, recloser,
* interrupt faults
* bridge two phases, or phase and ground
* ionized, insulator, conductor

I like it. 

Plasma is freaky. It sounds like an attack. 

7 comments:

JAL said...

Holy cow.

(Does that do it?)

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Whatever it was appeared to stay within known suburbia speed limit.

That's something.

bagoh20 said...

Yes, I'm interested in what regulated the speed. I suspect it was the time needed to burn off the insulation on the wire as it moved along.

rhhardin said...

A 30kv line lit up the neighbor's black locust tree pretty well, with daytime-visible arcs up and down the trunk.

The tree, being genus weed, thrived on it.

chickelit said...

My mother likes telling a story of how as a child she and her brother witnessed the following: Lightning struck a tree in their yard close to the house; a small bluish fireball entered a hole in a window screen and came into the house; the fireball headed in a straight line for a hanging light bulb and approaching it, did one loop around it and then exited out the same hole.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Its alive!

ken in tx said...

My grand parents, now gone, told of a time when a fire ball came down their chimney, roamed around the room and then went back up.