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Lightning Strikes Tongue Piercing

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The Myth

THIS MYTH WAS FEATURED IN...
Lightning Strikes Tongue PiercingEpisode 6: Lightning Strikes Tongue Piercing, Tree Cannon, Beat the Breath Test

ORIGINAL AIR DATE:11/7/2003
Myth Title: Tongue Stud Lightning Rod


Myth Description: The myth says that wearing a tongue stud increases your chances of getting struck by lightning.


MythBusters on the bust: Adam Savage, Jaime Hyneman


Hypothesis: The stud acts like a lightning rod attracting the lightning more to that person than a person without a piercing.


Procedure/Experimental Design: The Mythbusters put two ballistics gel heads under a lightning machine: one with a tongue piercing and one without.


Results: The lightning seemed to prefer the head with the piercing. However, with a lack of constant direct lightning strikes, the unpredictability of lighting seems to be the biggest factor.


Conclusion: The metal of a piercing is not suffcient enough to sway that much conductivity one way or another.


Busted or Not Busted: Busted
Fan Feedback

Highlights of the bust:

  • The amount of metal in a tounge ring is miniscule so you probably wouldn't get affected




Best quotes by the MythBusters:






Your Scientific Method

Did the MythBusters get it right? How would you have busted this myth differently? Share your experiment design for how you would prove/disprove this myth:

  • The myth was not tested with an indirect strike. If you are near enough to a lightning strike, anything metal will receive an induced charge like an electromagnet carrying AC near a coil can create a transformer. Sometimes this charge can be fatal such as underwire bras killing women. To test this you need two heads, a nearby strike of lightning from a machine, an oversized piercing (a necklace may be better) and look for a burn mark near the necklace.


  • When lightning strikes near a house, for instance, the enormous amound of current induces enough voltage in the DRYWALL NAILS of the house to heat the nail and cause a soot mark at the head of every nail - it burns the plaster over the nail.
  • When lightning strikes a field near a herd of cows, cows are killed due to the ground currents that flow in the earth causing a voltage drop across their FEET. Farmers will find dead cows with only burns on their hoofs. I don't think that the capacitor discharge will work on a "full scale" head, as the current is no where near that of lightning. But is was a fantastic segment!


  • To give an idea of the astonishing current involved, if you dig where lightning hit, you get "tree branches" of instantly-liquified-then-frozen soil turned into glass. These can be well over 10 ft deep. ( I read over 20ft ) Fulgerites or something, they're called.

  • Cellphones CAN kill you with lightning, by breaking your surface with differently conductive object, so if they can, then probably other metal can breach your isolation, too ( lightning oft "carries over" people, instead of going through 'em - cellphones change that )



See Also

Related myths: ----

Related resources and reference pages: ----



Threads

Anonymous  (Get credit for your thread)
Started By Thread Subject Replies Last Post
mythgirl Adam Savage 0 May 21 2008, 4:16 PM EDT by mythgirl
mythgirl
Thread started: May 21 2008, 4:16 PM EDT  Watch
I LOVE ADAM SAVAGE!!!!
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