Lightning hitting water

What really happens when lightning hits a huge body of water?

http://www.bigfoto.com/themes/nature/sky/lightning-2a7z.jpg

I mean: do the fish die? And if so, how far?

Does the water boil?

If a person is in the water when it is hit by the lightning, how far he has to be to be safe???

 

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if the water is pure it wouldn't conduct

If it's salty (or maybe other minerals too), I imagine you would be safe 20 meters away.

I imagine some of the water is instantly turned into steam and some surrounding water boils, but the surrounding water would cool it almost instantly.

I'm not sure about anything though

 

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Pure as in it's fresh water, as opposed to salt-water? Or pure as in the only thing existing in that water is H[Sub]2[/Sub]O molecules?

 

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Pure, as in only H2O molecules.

 

I have seen this out in the ocean, it makes a huge spray from the water rushing in to fill where water was vaporized. I imagine if you are out in it, you will die of electrocution, and the fish might die too, but they just go deeper when it storms.

 

Destilled water in theory should not carry a charge. I saw an article where they booted up a pc for a couple of minutes underwater. For some reason, every couple of minutes it would just reset.

They then got cooking oil, and booted the pc up in that. Its still running at extreme overclocking temps.

 

Lightning and Fish

 

I was once out in the ocean when a lightning storm came through. We stopped the boat at this island, and waited. It ended up going past us, and not directly overhead. It was still scary though. That was the second time I was in a bad place when a lightning storm went over (the first was above the timberline on a mountain ridge).

 

Man, that scientist sure didn't say much. I already guessed that.

What I want to know, how far is it safe to be in the water? How far the fish die? Is there a big steam when the water boils?

 

Does this ever even exist in liquid? I thought water was prone to self ionizing into H3O- and H+, though not enough to conduct significantly.

 

you'd be hard pressed to find water pure enough not to conduct

 

I would be surprised to learn that lightening would be dangerous to a large ship. Lightening is surely a common occurrence at sea and large ocean vesels have no place to hide during a storm.

The lightening rod was invented by Ben Franklin a long time before there were metal ships. I guess that it or some similar technology was employed to protect metal ships from lightening strikes.

Could metal ships rely only on a low probability of being struck?

 

Did anyone ever figure this out? Does it conduct? How far? What happens to the fish?

 

How do you think the electric eel and electric ray get started?

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I watch lightning strike all the time out in the ocean and it turns the water, at night, a very beautiful light greenish blue color. It glows for about 20 seconds then disappears. There are no dead fish anywhere when it strikes either, or at least none that floated to the surface.

 

0.005 – 0.05 S/m is drinking water conductivity

 

No one can say for certain what a safe distance would be. For one reason, it would vary with the intensity of the bolt. That's like asking "how close can I be to a bomb when it goes off?" How big is the bomb?????

 

No bodies of water on the Earth's surface are going to be so pure that they do not conduct electricity and even dissolved gases can make water conductive.

 

Wow, I was such a noob 8 months ago. Maybe I should delete this post

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so if it doesn't kill the fish, why do I need to get out of the water when a lightening storm rolls through?

 

H3o+ and OH-

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