Does Your Mobile Phone Attract Lightning

Let's get this thing straight

So you may have heard this all the time, when it is raining at least someone must have told you to turn off your mobile phone, or stop using it because they believe that you will get hit by lightning and get barbecued.

Maybe you might be one of those people who believes that lightning is attracted to your mobile phone.

I have being told million times to stop using my mobile phone when it is raining, and I have seen newspaper articles about people who got hit by lightning.

And I have questioned why and no one came with an answer. So for everyone out there let’s get things straight.

So what is fact and what is fiction?

The short answer is no, you will not get struck by lightning when you’re using your mobile. Well you can still get stuck by lightning but that is not because you’re using a mobile phone.

If you ask someone to explain how lightning can strike someone who is using a mobile phone the answer would be it just happens, most will not be able to give a rational explanation.

But if you’re someone who has studied physics at school you know that this is not true.

So let’s see how it works,

If you are using a landline then there is a higher chance of you getting struck by lightning, because lightning can strike one of those towers and through the wires the high voltage current can come to the phone and can strike the person who is using it.

But mobile phones are different, they are wireless devices. Many people believe that the connection that the device is having with the cellular tower acts as a conductor for the lightning current.

And that is not how mobile devices work, the mobile devices do not have a direct connection with the cellular tower. The signals that are coming from the cellular towers are everywhere surrounding us. As if we are bathed in a sea of electromagnetic signals. And it’s only our wireless devices has the capacity to take and give from this sea of electromagnetic field.

So if the electromagnetic fields have a higher potential to attract lightning then all of us are at risk of attracting lightning whether we are using a mobile phone or not.

Wireless devices are not grounded, so they are not lighting rods of any kind as it is frequently assumed.

There are some theories that cell phones somehow attracts lightnings by the field they produce, but the theory behind is weak.

Experimental evaluation is very hard, since lightning hits are quite rare, such events are guided by numerous parameters and there are lots of other, hard to evaluate factors. — physiscs.stackexchange.com

Also as you might know lightning and the cellular connections are both belongs to the electromagnetic spectrum and they sit on the different ends of the spectrum.

Using a wireless device does not increase your risk of getting struck by lightning. Your risk of getting stuck by lightning depends on many factors that are hard to evaluate by scientific experiment.

So if you get hit by lightning when using a mobile phone it’s just because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It might have originated because of increased risk of lightning when using a landline, with some publicity by journalists who doesn’t check their facts before publishing.

So next time if someone tells you to stop using your mobile phone when it is raining show them this post.

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