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Mobile Phones and Lightning a Lethal Mix

An anonymous reader writes "In a letter to the British Medical Journal, doctors wrote that people should not use mobile phones outdoors during thunderstorms because of the risk of being struck by lightning. Usually 'when someone is struck by lightning, the high resistance of the skin conducts the flash over the body in what is known as a flashover, but if a metal object, such as a phone, is in contact with the skin it disrupts the flashover and increases the odds of internal injuries and death.'"

3 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And if you are hit by lightning... by notaspunkymonkey · · Score: 0, Redundant

    This may be slightly redundant - but I thought that it is worth a mention. When is was about 14 I was playing golf on my high school field. The weather turned for the worse and it started with the Thunder and Lightning. One of my less intelligent friends thought that it would be cool to stand on the roof of our school library with a golf club in his hand to see if he could get struck. It took us ages to persuade him to come down! - its something I have never forgotten - although a twisted part of me is still interested to see what would have happened to him should he have been struck!

  2. Re:So you're telling me... by numbski · · Score: 1, Redundant

    How many times do we have to go through this? :P

    Now to do the stereotypical thing and quote wikipedia (which is always accurate to the letter, just like the King James Bible):

    "Marty carries a snapshot of himself with his sister and brother, and 1955 Doc Brown discovers they are fading out, first Dave, the oldest, then Linda. Marty finds himself stranded, not having brought any additional plutonium back with him. The plutonium is used to create the "1.21 gigawatts" of electricity used to power the flux capacitor. Doc explains that only a bolt of lightning has the sufficient power required. Marty was given a fundraising flyer from 1985 that recounts the story of how the town's clock tower was to be struck by lightning the following Saturday in 1955."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_future

    --

    Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

  3. Re:Talking in the rain by DaLukester · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Statistics dont lie; this is true. However correlation causality. Just because two things happen at the same does not mean one causes the other.

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    It is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician. A.De Morgan 1872