from Wikipedia

A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure formed by conducting material, or by a mesh of such material. Such an enclosure blocks out external static electrical fields. Faraday cages are named after physicist Michael Faraday, who built one in 1836 and explained its operation.

The electrical charges in the enclosing conductor repel each other and will therefore always reside on the outside surface of the cage. Any external static electrical field will cause the charges to rearrange so as to completely cancel the field’s effects in the cage’s interior. This effect is used for example to protect electronic equipment from lightning strikes and other electrostatic discharges.

Cars and airplanes are enclosures formed by conducting materials as in the above definition, therefore they act as faraday cages and protect the occupants from external electric charges such as lightning strikes.

The guys from Top Gear decided to put theory to the test and sent Hammond with a VW Golf to the Siemens High Voltage Lab in Berlin to find out what really happens when a car is hit by lightning.

I have to say that Richard Hammond is either really brave or totally insane. Enjoy!

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Filed under: science