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Exactly. You guys are overthinking the science here. Friction = heat. Heat = ice going all melty.

Thus concludes my physics dissertation. :)

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First, there have been lightning strike survivors, under a lot of circumstances. I recall reading about one whose underpants were actually burned from the heat. My high school physics teacher was struck once indirectly (pile of scrap metal in the rain).

Second, lightning hitting the kite is an embellishment, and not part of what was actually recorded of Franklin's experiment. The account given by Joseph Priestley (who presumably got the details from Franklin himself, who never wrote about it) says simply that the key, attached to a hemp string, collected a charge from the air, which is quite electrified during a storm without even considering lightning. Enough charge to produce a spark when Franklin's knuckle was placed next to it. As the string became wet, the charge buildup (and key discharge) became more copious.

As an aside, I find it a little annoying when the show keeps harping on about voltage, which is no measure of danger when it comes to static electricity. A normal high school Van de Graaf generator can store a charge up up to 750,000 volts, which means nothing beyond the fact that it's capable of jumping an 9-inch air gap. The number of coulombs, however, is far too small to be even remotely dangerous. I made those suckers zap me at full charge countless times.

But build a big charge, and 500K volts can be lethal. My lab mates and I built a lethal Leyden jar in physics class, using a 10-inche diameter bell jar and aluminum foil. The inner foil was connected to a wire with an alligator clip that was attached to a plastic meter stick held in the middle for charging. We didn't expect it to charge up to 500K volts, but that it did, which allowed the charge to jump from the outside foil across the air to the alligator clip. The part of the plastic meter stick where the clip was attached melted. For the record, the teacher told us in advance that our device would be lethal, so we took ample precautions.

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