Dang where is CMI when you need him?

Do you think the reason you stay away from windows during a tornado is that all of the people dumb enough to stand by windows have been weeded out of the gene pool?

Suzzer,

I didn't actually read that post, but I'm still very impressed at the effort you're putting into this. Bravo.

After Suzzer's post, I think the more interesting question is: How many whales haven't been killed by lightning in the history of earth?

7?

I haven't eaten lunch yet

Well if at any given moment there are 10 million whales - let's say avg. lifespan 20 years (prob. high) - that's 500k new whales/year. So 500k * 50 million = about 25 trillion whales have ever lived. Subtract 250 million killed by lightning = 24,999,750,000,000. +/- a few hundred.

Who ever is quoting me stop it.

lol why did you delete that long post?

Not sure if this first part is a level associated with the very funny spoiler. But if not, I calculate the odds of one whale getting hit on his one 1 sq. km patch of ocean. When I multiply by 17 million, I am either multiplying by the total # of patches of ocean, or total # of whales, however you want to look at it. But not both.

One part I'm a little confused about it what happens when I add up all the tiny probabilities for each whale (by multiplying by 17 million), and I get 4.96. I'm pretty sure that means on average a whale somewhere will get struck 4.96 times in a year (diff. whales obviously), or 4.96 whales per year. But I'm still a little fuzzy.

Glad you liked it

I think this is the same thing. A total of 4.96 strikes of lightning will hit *a* whale. It could be the same unlucky whale. Although someone who gets struck by lightning twice is both very lucky (didn't die first time) and very unlucky i guess.

Your post was pretty funny.

BTW - this thread is a perfect example of the fine line that is OOT. Not sure how to quantify it, but it seems like just a couple tiny alterations could take this from a seriously entertaining read to slap-my-face stupid. Kudos, OP.

This thread confirms my belief that people will make odds about ANYTHING. OP, what odds would you put on a tree making a sound that falls in a forest with no one to hear it? 1:10000?

traz + Empire,
I think talking in terms of voltage just confuses the problem in this case. Electricity flows through the path of least residence. Wires are designed to be really low resistance. The plastic around wires are designed to be really high resistance. Birds have pretty high resistance too. Plus, the bird doesn't go in the fastest possible path. So, the electricity doesn't go through the bird.

If the wire splits open and the bird has one foot on one side and one foot on the other side, electricity's gonna go through the bird and there probably won't be a bird anymore.

suzzer,
Awesome work. I don't think anyone (or anyone who's reasonably intelligent) disputed that a ton of whales would've been hit if your base assumption is true--that a whale at the surface gets hit as often as any other spot on the surface. It's still pretty awesome to see how ridic high the number is though. My estimate for how many whales have lived in history would've been way, way low.

With that said, I think your main assumption is pretty sketchy. Basically, I figure that the conductivity of stuff goes ocean water >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> whale >>>>>> air. So, I think the lightning rod effect will only be relevant if the distance through the air that the lightning has to travel to get to the whale is less than that of the water (in fact, it would have to be even a little less than that). If the ocean's perfectly flat, this is only going to effect a really tiny surface area, since whales seems to stay really really close to the water. So I don't think there's really any lightning-rod effect.

I don't really get how lightning's created, but, wouldn't there be a pretty strong effect of lightning not firing right above a whale, since the whale is a pretty nasty resistor in the middle of what's basically a perfect conductor.

Plus, from watching various movies, it seems that the ocean is really really far from flat during thunderstorms. Obviously since salt water conducts many many orders of magnitude better than air, the lightning's going to hit at the peak of waves. Would a whale be at the peak of a wave?