How Does A Simple Lightning Conductor Protect A Building?

How Does A Simple Lightning Conductor Protect A Building?

A lightning conductor, or Lightning rod, is a metal rod or wire that is fixed to an uncovered part of a building's roof or other tall structure to collect lightning and divert harmlessly into the ground.

Fig. 1: Lightning struck at the tallest building in the city center

Lightning conductor or Lightning rod is the same thing, in the UK people say Lightning conductor, on the other hand, US & AUS people call it Lightning rod.

So, the name lightning conductors recommends that they conduct the electric charge that comes from the cloud and hits the building.

This simple equipment attracts lightning charges like a magnet, harvests them, and sends them to the ground through the wire connected to a rooftop lightning rod and a buried metal plate at the bottom.

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How Does Lightning Work?

A lightning rod or lightning conductor does not allow the electric charge to pass through the building material.

No metal in the building touches the lightning rod or conductor connected between the rod and the buried earthing plate; it must be isolated from other materials of the structure.

The lightning rod and conducting wire must be made of a good conducting material, like Copper, Aluminum, etc.

The lightning conductor is extended to the ground where a plate of conducting material is placed underground. The connection with the ground sets the potential at zero and hence offers the easiest path for the charge to pass through.

The conductor is typically raised above the building in sufficient height that absorb the shock before the lightning can strike the building.

Lightning rod height should be measured such that to cover the maximum protected area. Draw 45 45-degree straight line from the top of the rod; the covered area by the straight line is the protected area from a lightning strike.

Fig. 2: Maximum area that a lightning rod can protect

As the lightning strikes the rod, it passes through the rod and connects the conducting wire to the ground, which saves the building structure from any damage due to the flow of such a high charge.

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Who Invented the Lightning Conductor First?

In the USA, credit is normally given to Benjamin Franklin, who wrote about them between 1749 and 1760. The odd thing about all this is that Franklin’s famous “kite string” experiment was supposed to have been carried out in 1782.

As per Popular Science Monthly/Volume 42/January 1893/The Inventor of the Lightning-Rod, "Prokop Diviš was experimenting with similar ideas in the Czech area around the 1740s, and there are reported devices in India and China from much earlier.