All Four Engines Out: Volcanic Ash, St Elmo’s Fire and Electrostatics
Outline
Sequence of Events on BA009 Evening of June 24 1982 over Indonesia
The Volcanic Cloud Seen from Space at midnight on same night
The four forces of nature
Introductory Electrostatics
Like charges repel
Aside: Introductory Nuclear Physics
Charge
Hunt for Red October
Volcanic Ash Mt Galunggung eruption in June 1982
Charged Volcanic Ash
First Result
Inside a Material: Insulator
Inside a Material: Conductor
Conduction of charge
Coulomb’s Law
The Electric Field
Static Electricity and Ordinary Electricity
Lightning
Gauss’s Law
Internal fields?
Faraday cage
BA009 in Charged Ash Cloud
Second Result
Charge and conductors
Sparks and Sharp Points
Half Dome - Yosemite National Park
St Elmo’s Fire
Third Result
Attracting neutral insulators
Inside engines
Fourth Result
The aftermath
Conclusion
References
Email: dnj@physics.unimelb.edu.au
Home Page: http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~dnj