Latest Electrical phenomena Stories
PALM BEACH, Fla., Feb. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Branding Group, LLC announced today their receipt of Authorized Collegiate Licensing, from the Licensing Resource Group (LRG), and Strategic Marketing Affiliates (SMA) for their innovative ThreadLites(TM) & TechnoThreadZ(TM) - Illuminated Branded Apparel Line. U.S. Branding Group President Rich Butler, a 25-year veteran in promotional products and retail markets, can hardly contain his excitement and enthusiasm. "We expect this to be the...
High-energy bursts of gamma rays typically occur far out in space, perhaps near black holes or other high-energy cosmic phenomena. So imagine scientists' surprise in the mid-1990s when they found these powerful gamma ray flashes happening right here on Earth, in the skies overhead.They're called Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes, or TGFs, and very little is known about them. They seem to have a connection with lightning, but TGFs themselves are something entirely different."In fact,"...
Power-generating rubber films developed by Princeton University engineers could harness natural body movements such as breathing and walking to power pacemakers, mobile phones and other electronic devices.The material, composed of ceramic nanoribbons embedded onto silicone rubber sheets, generates electricity when flexed and is highly efficient at converting mechanical energy to electrical energy. Shoes made of the material may one day harvest the pounding of walking and running to power...
Scientists and engineers have developed a "˜smart armor' that has the ability to recognize the size of bullets it is shot with and generate electrical power upon impact. The brains behind the operation, according to Discovery News, are at U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) in Michigan. "As a kid, everyone played those video games that showed you how much armor you had left as a percentage bar," TARDEC contractor John Wray told Discovery....
A group of researchers at the City College of New York is developing a new way to generate power for planes and automobiles based on materials known as piezoelectrics, which convert the kinetic energy of motion into electricity. They will present their concept later this month at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics will take place from November 22-24 at the Minneapolis Convention Center.About a half-inch by one inch in size, these...
There is good news for the global effort to reduce the amount of lead in the environment and for the growing array of technologies that rely upon the piezoelectric effect. A lead-free alternative to the current crop of piezoelectric materials has been identified by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC), Berkeley.The key to this success is the use of bismuth ferrite, a compound with a...
Every year, scientists learn something new about the inner workings of lightning.With satellites, they have discovered that more than 1.2 billion lightning flashes occur around the world every year. (Rwanda has the most flashes per square kilometer, while flashes are rare in polar regions.) Laboratory and field experiments have revealed that the core of some lightning bolts reaches 30,000 Kelvin (53,540 ºF), a temperature hot enough to instantly melt sand and break oxygen and nitrogen...
A freak bolt of lightning struck a 56-year-old cyclist in Englewood, Colo., even though no electrical storms were reported in the area, authorities say.Perry Schellpfeffer, an Englewood police spokesman, told The Denver Post the unidentified victim was hit by the lightning Wednesday afternoon. His injuries were not considered life-threatening.There were some clouds and it was thundering a little, but there wasn't any kind of lightning storm, Schellpfeffer said.Among U.S. states, Colorado tied...
U.S. scientists say they've captured a one-second image and the electrical fingerprint of a gigantic lightning jet that flowed 40 miles upward from a storm. While not occurring every time a thunderstorm develops, the rarely seen, highly charged meteorological events can flash up to the lower levels of space, or the ionosphere, Duke University scientists said. They are substantially larger than their downward striking cousins. Despite poor viewing conditions as a result of a full moon and a...
Duke University researchers have captured images of lightning bolts shooting upwards.The rare phenomenon, known as "gigantic jets," was photographed during tropical storm Cristobal last year.The gigantic jets shot more than 40 miles high, Duke Professor Steven Cummer and colleagues wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience. "Despite poor viewing conditions as a result of a full moon and a hazy atmosphere, we were able to clearly capture the gigantic jet," said Cummer."What we were able to...
Latest Electrical phenomena Reference Libraries
When we think of thunderstorms we have to remember the deadliest part of those storms and that is the lightning that occurs with them. Lightning is found in many forms. The first type of lightning is known as cloud to cloud meaning that the electric charge travels from one cloud to the other. The second type of lightning is the Cloud to Air meaning the lighting moves from the cloud and enters the clear air of the sky. A third type of lightning is the cloud to ground. This is the most...
A Radio Atmospheric signal (sometimes referred to as Sferic or Spheric), is a broadband electromagnetic impulse that occurs during atmospheric lightning discharges. Sferics spread out from the lightning source and can be received thousands of miles away. A sferic, depending on atmospheric conditions, may extend anywhere from a few kHz to several tens of kHz. Sferics from far reaching storms, over 1500 miles away, are generally offset in frequency range and may be picked up as tweeks. A...
Heat Lightning is actually faint flashes of lightning reflecting outward from distant thunderstorms. These flashes usually do not produce thunder as the storm is sometimes too far away to be heard. The term heat lightning got its name because it often occurs on hot summer nights and does not produce audible thunder. One reason heat lightning can be seen so far away is due to the reflection of the light bouncing off water particles in moist, humid air and as light is scattered throughout the...
Aurora -- The Polar Aurora are natural displays of light in the sky that can be seen with the unaided eye only at night. An auroral display in the Northern Hemisphere is called the aurora borealis, or the northern lights; in the Southern Hemisphere it is called the aurora australis. Auroras are the most visible effect of the sun's activity on the earth's atmosphere. The beautiful and often eerie curtains of light in the night time sky have been observed by people for millennia. An aurora...
