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I wonder if teflon coated shoes would be effective, if rubber are not? No. You have to consider the distance through air. Electricity will still take the pat

I wonder if teflon coated shoes would be effective, if rubber are not? No. You have to consider the distance through air. Electricity will still take the path of least resistance which, even if you're wearing rubber or teflon shoes, is still just a couple of centimeters out of the shoe and to the ground. As the article points out: the lightning just traveled a kilometer to get to you, so why would it care about a few centimeters or inches or meters of insulating material when it would just hop through the air around it and to the ground.--- --- I suppose that you could argue that a really large teflon pad would increase the aggregate resistance (through your nice, self-contained ocean and then over the large teflon pad) to such an extent that the lightning would pass by you and ground directly, but those would be giant shoes and the little gap between them would probably defeat the whole purpose of wearing giant teflon snow-shoes.

glurgh 13y ago
It doesn't seem inconceivable that wearing shoes takes you out of the path of least resistance as compared to some other path, say, the metal-framed shelving you are standing next to. I don't think wearing shoes is any kind of practical way to avoid getting hit by lightning but the 'kilometers of air' argument seems sort of wrongheaded. You don't need to become a more resistant path to ground than a kilometer of air - you just have to be more so than other paths. How long the discharge traveled to form that path doesn't really matter.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  Unfortunately, simply reaching the ground may not be sufficient. The ground is not necessarily a good enough conductor to dissipate the full charge quickly. The rest of the charge flows near the ground looking for more ground. Most lightning strike survivors are probably surviving "near misses", albeit sometimes ones where substantial electricity flowed through their body. A direct hit is probably going to be lethal nearly 100% of time -- there is a lot of energy in a lightning strike.

glurgh 13y ago

It doesn't seem inconceivable that wearing shoes takes you out of the path of least resistance as compared to some other path, say, the metal-framed shelving you are standing next to. I don't think wearing shoes is any kind of practical way to avoid getting hit by lightning but the 'kilometers of air' argument seems sort of wrongheaded. You don't need to become a more resistant path to ground than a kilometer of air - you just have to be more so than other paths. How long the discharge traveled to form that path doesn't really matter.

comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
Unfortunately, simply reaching the ground may not be sufficient. The ground is not necessarily a good enough conductor to dissipate the full charge quickly. The rest of the charge flows near the ground looking for more ground. Most lightning strike survivors are probably surviving "near misses", albeit sometimes ones where substantial electricity flowed through their body. A direct hit is probably going to be lethal nearly 100% of time -- there is a lot of energy in a lightning strike.