By Pian Pawakapan
"Lightning never strikes the same place twice" is a proverb that has been used for many generations. Though the true use is to say that misfortune rarely happens to the same person in the same way more than once, it has led many people to believe that lightning, somehow, really cannot strike the same place more than once. In this article I will attempt to understand lightning and disprove this myth.
First of all, I would need to understand how lightning works and what it is, which was done through research. Clouds in the sky contain water droplets and ice crystals. When the crystals and water start to become more dense, the crystals start to rub together and something call charging can happen. This rubbing causes the positive and negative charges to fall off the crystals. This is part of static electricity, much like when you rub against a wool carpet or a balloon. The positive charges will start to group together, as will the negative charges, forming high and low electric potential areas, respectively. If the potential difference is large enough, large amounts of current can flow from high to low, breaking the resistance that the air has to offer. This current will flow from the cloud to the ground in the form of lightning, and the appearance would depend on the configuration of the particles in the cloud and the air.
Finding the information to disprove this myth was fairly easy. Pictures and footage of tall structures being struck by lightning can be found throughout the internet. Skyscrapers in particular are easily struck, since solid objects offer less resistance than air and are closer to the sky for lightning to strike. Pictures of the Empire State Building in New York being struck are particularly easy to be found, since it is struck around 100 times per year.
After finding this information, I decided to go a bit further and research a bit more on lightning strikes. I found a research done by NASA-funded scientists in 2003 on the number of lightning strikes in an area, where the title was: "Lightning really does strike more than twice". They did this experiment by setting out into a plain during a storm, and recorded hundreds of lightning strikes on camera. The scientists found that some areas were struck by lightning more than once, and also that some strikes would strike the ground in more than one area. 35 percent of the lightning strikes recorded branched out and struck the ground in places at least ten yards away. They also found that the chances of being struck are around 45 percent greater than what normal people assume.
Disproving the myth that lightning doesn't strike the same place twice was simple, and required little to no effort at all. No experiments were conducted, partly because I didn't want to get struck. Anyway, from research I have found that lightning can strike the same place more than once, and also that it can strike more than one place at once.
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