Science Diary: Lightning – Charged!

music
Ambience: Thunderstorm, computer beeps, countdown

“I’m standing on top of a mountain ridge where we have our lab. And I’m in fog.”

Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Richard Sonnenfeld is an atmospheric physicist at New Mexico Tech. He’s at the school’s Langmuir Laboratory in the Magdalena Mountains.

“From somewhere else this would probably look like these beautiful cotton clouds that decorate the tops of mountains. Visibility’s maybe thirty meters. And the electric fields are starting to increase. So I’ll walk inside. This storm is slowly electrifying.”

Richard Sonnenfeld and his students are at the Langmuir Laboratory studying lightning by launching instruments attached to weather balloons directly into storms.

“So what you just heard there- is you heard a beep. The beep is our field alarm. We actually have three field meters arranged around the mountain, and if any one of them exceeds one point eight kilovolts per meter, a beep goes of. So if we’re working, we know that there are high fields. And if we’re getting ready for a storm, that kind of lets us know that it’s coming. Okay. Eight kilovolts fields. Getting ready to launch. Okay, somebody open the doors a bit.”

STUDENT: “Five, four, three, two, one, release.”

Now that the balloon is launched, Richard and his team hope that the instrument detaches properly from the balloon so that they’ll be able to retrieve it and get all of its data. We’ll have more in future programs. You can check out Richard Sonnenfeld’s blog on pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

Science Diary: Lightning - Charged!

As the electrical field of a storm increases, Science Diarist Richard Sonnenfeld and his team get ready to launch an instrument designed to study lightning.
Air Date:09/04/2007
Scientist:
Transcript:

music
Ambience: Thunderstorm, computer beeps, countdown

“I'm standing on top of a mountain ridge where we have our lab. And I'm in fog.”

Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Richard Sonnenfeld is an atmospheric physicist at New Mexico Tech. He’s at the school’s Langmuir Laboratory in the Magdalena Mountains.

“From somewhere else this would probably look like these beautiful cotton clouds that decorate the tops of mountains. Visibility's maybe thirty meters. And the electric fields are starting to increase. So I'll walk inside. This storm is slowly electrifying.”

Richard Sonnenfeld and his students are at the Langmuir Laboratory studying lightning by launching instruments attached to weather balloons directly into storms.

“So what you just heard there- is you heard a beep. The beep is our field alarm. We actually have three field meters arranged around the mountain, and if any one of them exceeds one point eight kilovolts per meter, a beep goes of. So if we're working, we know that there are high fields. And if we're getting ready for a storm, that kind of lets us know that it's coming. Okay. Eight kilovolts fields. Getting ready to launch. Okay, somebody open the doors a bit.”

STUDENT: “Five, four, three, two, one, release.”

Now that the balloon is launched, Richard and his team hope that the instrument detaches properly from the balloon so that they’ll be able to retrieve it and get all of its data. We’ll have more in future programs. You can check out Richard Sonnenfeld’s blog on pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.