William W. Plummer wrote:
Those were interesting articles but they deal with minimizing the
effect of an actual strike. I'm concerned with avoiding strikes in
the first place by keeping charges from building up in the area. This is
what lightning rods do and their effectiveness has been
demonstrated for many years.

The reason that lightning rods work is as I said, the electric field
is concentrated around sharp points -- all the equipotentials in the
field are packed together. This means there is a large voltage
difference in a short space. So, if there is a breakdown, this is
where it will happen, but again, lightning rods are used to provide
static protection. Prior to a breakdown, this will be the "path of
least resistence".
If you doubt the fields being concentrated at sharp points, you could
repeat hours of agony I suffered in an EE lab years ago. We had to
plot fields around various shapes using "Teladeltos" (resistive)paper
and silver paint for conductors. A pin connected to a volt meter
allowed measuring the voltage at a point. Hundreds of readings were
needed and lots of slide rule work to produce a graph paper plot of
the equipotentials. I threw out my field theory books decades ago;
otherwise, I would cite chapter and verse.


Exactly. The purpose of lightning rods is to REPEL lightning, not attract
it!

Sometimes things go wrong and the lightning does hit a lightning rod (the
"Drunken Thor" hypothesis). That's why you want a big-ass conductor straight
to earth, otherwise you could use #14 for the necessary static electricity
charge.