...daydreams

Daydreams and an unhealthy obsession with lightning.
Enter The Zeus project.

I've been obsessed with lightning since I was a small child. The sheer power and spontaneity just amazes me. While most run inside during thunderstorms, I run outside armed with my video camera.

Enough with that.

A few years ago, I saw this video:



I did a little research, and found out a little about how this all works.
apparently they attach a copper-Kevlar tether to a rocket, pneumatically launch it, and about 1/2 the time, they get a strike. brilliant. I didn't see any warning that said "Don't try this at home"

Seeing as I'm a poor teenager, I would rather not pay for multiple rockets, motors, and a pneumatic launching system. Why don't I just go with something cheap? This is where Ben Franklin steps in.
Our 6th grade text books inform us that he flew a kite in a lightning storm to attract electrical charge. NOT to be struck by lightning. If that had happened, we would have had Franklin toast instead of all the wonderful inventions he thought up.

I began sketching out a few ideas for a remote kite-flying system, and then decided that the idea involved too much time with me holding onto a kite in the middle of a large field during a lightning storm.
hmmmmm....

how about balloons? well, it's reasonably easy to make a remote release system for a bunch of balloons. pull a string when the storm gets especially nasty, watch the balloons float up trailing a thin copper wire, and a couple minutes later...BOOM!

...or so I originally thought.

as I thought more and more, I worried about the balloons drifting. what happens if the balloon drifts, dragging the wire over something important that really would do better without a couple million volts coursing through it?
...yeah.

So back to square one. the kite.
tests must be done.

...to be continued.

Introduction

oh...the things I think of while sitting through school.

This will be a quick place for me to jot down ideas as i get them, and for all of you to read about my epic project that will probably kill me.

...here goes nothing