So I was going to blog about Google, Microsoft and online vs offline apps, but the front page article of the metro annoyed me so much I'm going to trash that instead.
I know taking a pop at the media is a bit silly, and makes for lazing blogging, but really, noddy science write ups annoy me.
Headline: Using iPod or phone in a storm 'could kill'
You now immediately know the article is bunk because they have used quote marks around 'could kill' idnicating what's following is a bunch of self evidence dressed up as new news. Quotes in news articles where they are not actual quotes tend to be a proxy for "tentatively linked tangential crap", both clearly showing how the news papers thinks the public are too stupid to understand real science, and they themselves are far more equipted to write sensationalised rubbish than any real content on anything with a vague science bias.
I can't find the exact text of the article online, but here is the Daily Mail version, which is almost the same.
Now I wrote a thesis on lightning protection. And did a big project on it. So I know a bit about it. And the first thing to know is lightning is fucking complicated.
Now I'll illustrate the bunk.
People should be wary of using mobile phones outdoors in stormy weather due to the risk of being struck by lightning, doctors warned today.
Why doctors? I doctor gets the end result (i.e. fried charred person). Doctors are not electrical engineers, physicists or scientists. Doctors can tell you what got fried. Scientists tell you why. So already in the 1st paragraph we know this is bunk.
Scientists could tell you "People should be wary in stormy weather due to the risk of being stuck by lightning". End point.
Three experts have described how a 15-year-old girl was struck by lightning while using her mobile phone in a large London park. She was successfully resuscitated, but a year later was wheelchair-bound and found to be suffering complex physical, cognitive and emotional problems.
So three experts are needed to tell you that being struck by lightning is bad for you. Shit hell, my 6 year old honaree nephew Connor could tell you that. The resultant medical problems are a result of being struck by lightning, not by the fact she was using the mobile phone. They are trying to make it look like the effect of the strike is related to using the phone but it's not. A human body conducting that amount of electricity will go pop. So far this is not realted to the phone.
The girl also had a perforated eardrum on the side she had been holding the mobile phone, said the doctors, in a letter to the British Medical Journal.
Brilliant. So we do have some sort of evidence the strike was related to her using her phone. It looks important and like a big fact, but whilst it is correct, it's really not that big a fact. We'll get to this in a bit.
If someone is struck by lightning, the high resistance of human skin usually results in lightning being conducted over the skin rather than through the body - a process known as "flashover".
OK bunk alert again. See the quotes. This is again the indication that "lying" is going on. This is known as the skin effect, which occurs because lightning is actually an alternating current. The skin effect has nothing to do with human skin, but means that when a high frequency current runs through a conductor, the tendency is for it to run on the outside or surface of the conductor. Power lines use this, to actually remove the core, which is why you see a group of 6 wires for each wire sometimes.
When someone is wet, this enhances the skin effect as it provides less resistance on the skin. This is why people sometimes survive lightning strikes, as stikes of low amplitude (<5ka). However not all strikes are this low in amplitude and anything higher you're pretty much toast. And if it doesn't hit you but hits the ground near you, you're pretty much toast too.
A flashover is when a current jumps from one spot to another because it breaks down the air in between. Lightning itself is actually a flashover. If lightning flashed over you, it would hit you and then jump to the ground. This does not happen, as you are less resistive than air. BUNK!
However, the doctors said, conductive materials in direct contact with skin such as liquids or metallic objects - like a mobile phone - disrupt the flashover and result in internal injury with a greater risk of dying.
Sop what they are saying is that, it was going to flashover to ground but because you have something metal in your hand it doesn't it flashes over to you.
Bunk!
The current is already flowing down you. It's just you are creating an easier path to flow through the phone, so instead of being evenly distributed there is a preference for flowing down the phone. But then once it's flowed through the phone it's pretty much back to the skin effect.
In fact once could argue that the phone directs current away from your head quicker which is good. Liquids in direct contact with skin, enhance the skin effect and equalise voltage, so so it's better to be wet or in a pool.
Your risk of dying is related to the current of the strike. Get hit by a 250ka strike and they'll be picking you off the ground with a spade.
They said three other cases had been reported in newspapers in China, Korea, and Malaysia.
4 is not a statistically relevant number.
"This rare phenomenon is a public health issue, and education is necessary to highlight the risk of using mobile phones outdoors during stormy weather to prevent future fatal consequences from lightning strike injuries related to mobile phones.
Could also be rewritten "Being stuck by lightning is not good for your health"
The doctors said the Australian Lightning Protection Standard recommends that metallic objects, including cordless or mobile phones, should not be used (or carried) outdoors during a thunderstorm
Sevitz says "During a thunderstorm, stay away from trees. Preferably get indoors or into a car." Wandering outside during storm has self evident risks.
They added: "We could not find any advice from British telecommunication companies."
That's because they are probably busy doing shit.
Here Endith The Lesson.
1. matthew
Your blog posts where you categorically debunk tabloid ‘journalism’ are totally my favourites, probably because you write so passionately in them.
2. FurryJumperGirl
“Three experts have described how a 15-year-old girl was struck by lightning while using her mobile phone in a large London park”
3. Adrian
15 year old girls apparently don’t know when to come in from the rain.
They are way too busy having sex these days instead of learning science. There is a lesson here.
4. Mrs. X
Clearly the lesson is that the amount you know about lightning is inversely proportional to how much sex you have. This frightens me since I now know lots more about lightning than I did ten minutes ago.
5. David
You’d better let NASA know that they are using the term flashover incorrectly:
What happens when people and lightning converge
I’m also fairly sceptical of your assertion that lightning is an alternating current.
6. Adrian
Hmmm, we used the terms flashover and skin effect fairly consistency in my engineering course. Although when they descrtibe it as “external flashover” it sounds like they are saying “runs down the surface of your skin” which is the skin effect.
A flashover means the spark would jump off you which doesn’t happen. It runs down the water on your skin.
Lightning isn’t actual alternating current, but it is AC like. It’s a quick spike and change. It’s definitely not DC. See the link on the words “alternating current” above.
7. David
So, in your efforts to keep things simple for the reader you changed “AC like” to “alternating current”. Isn’t this what you are complaining that the newspaper is guilty of?
It seems to me that “skin effect” is a generic term applying to the mobilisation of electons only in the outer layer of a conductor, whereas the term flashover refers only to the effect seen in lightning strikes.
The lightning is DC. The fact that a transient voltage signal invokes AC like response does not mean that the voltages are ever reversed which is what would be required for AC.
Could it all be a terminology thing - i.e different terms in different countries - I’ve never heard the term flashover to electricity “jumping” between metal objects, we would refer to this as “arcing” in the UK.
8. Adrian
Ok, I’ll grant you that the AC DC thing is more complicated. In a way it’s neither, but it does exhibit AC like properties and not DC like. But I would still argue that half an AC cycle is AC not DC.
I think it can partly be a terminology. We use the term arcing and flashover in SA. A 750kv powerline flashing over to earth will vaporise a human. An arc tends to be used to describe a longer or maintained “jumping”, a flashover for a short of temporary “spark”.
9. Stuart
“Three experts have described how a 15-year-old girl was struck by lightning while using her mobile phone in a large London park”
If they had gotten, say, twelve experts - not on anything relevant - stamp collecting and taxidermy would be fine - to describe it, the sheer number of experts would have persuaded me. But three? It’s like they’re not even trying.
Bravo, sir. There was a similarly enraging Fox item over here that made the email rounds as an attachment of a guy using an oxygen-hydrogen torch, saying that it was much more environmentally friendly than regular oxy-cetalene and much better for certain applications, and that using his ‘unique electrolysis process’ he was producing what he called ‘HHO’ gas from water to power his car. On closer inspection of his website, it seems that ‘HHO’ is in fact a mixture of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen that he claims, through a most professionally formatted report to World Hydrogen News, is magic. Well, that’s what it boils down to. He invents new words (magnecular) to describe what he thinks are revolutionary types of particles and to replace the staid old ‘molecular’. It was in fact a load of horseshit, but it STILL made the rounds in my office, packed with people with lots of years of science education.
I ask you. Is there any hope at all?
10. theb
of course articles in the Metro are bad - Metro just is bad! Have you checked out their priorities? Front page: silly novelty story like the one about phones in thunderstorms paired with completely random photo of celebrity or whichever pretty girl has made the headlines this week. Inner front: tattle about the Government, badly researched. Third page: more novelty / celebrity stories. And then, AFTER all of that crap, they get to the serious international news, again, badly researched.
Keeps me entertained on the tube though, eh.
11. Destructor
So, in your efforts to keep things simple for the reader you changed “AC like” to “alternating current”. Isn’t this what you are complaining that the newspaper is guilty of?
pwn3d!
I wouldn’t trust a guy who doesn’t know what the word for someone who studies lightning is.
12. Adrian
I stand by my statement that someone who studies lightning is a scientist, a physicist and an electrical engineer.
13. Stuart
Someone who studies lightning: A Very Quick Worker.
14. Destructor
I stand by my statement that someone who studies lightning is a scientist, a physicist and an electrical engineer.
And a human being and breathes air and has a brain and a variety of other imprecise classifications. That is not how English works. Someone who studies lightning is a subset of scientist, but that subset has a name.