How does lightning and metal rods make glass by sticking the rod in sand like in a beach?

like in the movie “sweet home alabama” when josh lucas made glass and stuck the metal rods and the sand on the beach.

8 Comments

Xfactor
on November 30th, -0001

Much of the sand you see around the county is composed of quartz, and when quartz is melted and cools quickly it forms glass. Just about all of glass that you see in stores is formed by melting sand. The path of the lightning is reflected by the shape of the resulting glass “carrot.”

The technical term for the glass formed from lightning is fulgerite If you search for the term in Yahoo there is at least one website that has a photo gallery for them, and I suspect you’ll find them interesting and probably beautiful.
SimpleStripes
on November 30th, -0001

Yes, glass is sand.
Sheepish
on November 30th, -0001

glass is formed when sand is heated.lightning causes heat ,so the sand gets heated and turns into glass.
Gideeup
on November 30th, -0001

It doesn’t. It actually makes a hollow rock like formation. Go to http://www.imdb.com and type in the movie title. They explained it on there.
WinterWonderland
on November 30th, -0001

The basic building block of glass is silica. The majority of beach sand is composed of silica and is the raw material of glass. The lightning heats the silica in the sand to beyond its melting point and therefore you get glass.
MardyMarsupial
on November 30th, -0001

it heats the sand to melting and fusing temp by its resistance to the electrical charge develope in the lightnning it will do it without the rods walking along the beach from time to time you will find small clumps of fused sandy glass…. that is from lightning
FeeltheForce
on November 30th, -0001

sand is mainly made up of sillica which is the main ingredient of glass.
metal rods are lightning conductors(attracts lightning) especially in open areas like the beach and lightning contains a great deal of energy which translate to so much heat that sand fuses into glass.
God bless,
gabe
chaotykxninja
on February 16th, 2012

incorrect. lightning can very easily produce glass of intricate design, much like those shown in the motion picture ”Sweet Home Alabama”. However, if you were to just position a rod in the sand, your efforts would only produce ”Fulgurite”. This is because the lightning requires a fair amount of guidance. You must first, use a standard 5 gallon bucket, fill this bucket with sand consisting of as much pure composites including silca, quarts, and carbon. position the rod in the center, with the end of the rod being half to a quarter of the depth of the bucket. lastly, but most importantly you insulate the outer surface around the sides of the bucket with an effective insulator such as rubber or wood. then make small holes about the size of a pen or pencil in the bottom of the bucket before placing the bucket in the ground. this whole procedure will guide the reaction, so that as the lightning connects with the pole the stream of electrons are guided towards the bottom through the sand. i hope that helps