Re: Beading caught on film.

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>

"I did see this once by eye in a natural lightning strike. I was
traveling
north in stop and go traffic, in west central Florida, an area that has
particulary robust lightning. I had the window down on the car, and I
was
watching an approaching storm head. There came a bolt close enough to
hear
the arc as it connected with the ground, so I quickly turned my head to
the
left, to see the arc. It was one of those moments that I caught just
right,
because as I watched the bolt decay, it didn't just "shut off" as they
often seem to, rather, it became segmented like a string of sausages, or
a
dashed vertical line. The links shrunk into smaller and smaller
segments,
until finally I saw what could be best compared to a string of pearls.
The
ball segment lasted only a split second, then they all vanished. I was
probably only able to see this because of it's near proximity and it was
in
the mid afternoon, so there was not a severe difference in contrast
between
the daytime sky and the arc of lightning.
    Not quite Tesla coil related, but I thought I would share this
experience with you since the one frame of the film reminded my of that
experience. It was quite amazing how the solid line became so perfectly
like this ----------  to ............

Dave Goodfellow"

	I once saw something very similar under almost identical conditions.
"Hiss - BOOM".  However, I was convinced at the time (still am) that
most of the interesting visual effects were as a result of "overloading"
the eye and were the result of retinal fatigue.

Ed