w_tom said:
IOW the giant electrical wave appears just about equally on
everything in the circuit.
Sure it does, at different amplitudes! Simultaneously at high amplitude
near the strike, and low amplitude far away from the strike. As the
"ocean wave" rolls on, the amplitude rises farther away.
Uh, "delta wave" is not a term known to me, but it's cute, and I'll
accept it!
Virtually everything is located in the same part of the wave
meaning there is near zero voltage difference.
This is simply not so - for current to flow at all there has to be a
difference of voltages. But if you are trying to say that
free-floating, unearthed (and well insulated from earth
equipment is
safe because it experience zero voltage difference across it, I'd
agree! Let's all continue using airplanes.
Surges are done in microseconds.
Hey, let's not forget nanoseconds.
No, I can't take this very seriously.
Things go bang in
milliseconds. How do you explain the discrepancy?
Well, your point is what? That after a millisecond the first capacitor
across the rails blows apart? Personally, I wouldn't have given it more
than a few microseconds, but who's counting. Well, while it was taking
current it was keeping the voltage across it nicely down, in
conjunction with the huge voltage drop across the conductor (better
termed "resistor") leading to it. So it "protected" the rest of the
circuit for a bit, and then it popped, rather like the old waistcoat
button, straining the next one ...
Oh ho ho!
Damage occurs to the circuit component that is
weakest and that absorbs excessive power.
Except that you have forgotten that it has to get there first. And to
do that it has to get past a whole lot of other things that might well
be stronger, but which have to last out until then ... it's an
interesting exercise to compute the power time integral across
differnet bits of circuit and see which hits the limit first. My money
would be on the first parallel component in line, most of the time.
Peter