With that said, a friend in Noxapater, MS had a 100+ foot HAM tower in his back yard. His station was in his very organized basement of the house. Along one wall was a work bench with electrical connectors for testing equipment. Against a far wall was his HAM radio station. In the middle of the basement floor was a 4 foot wide by 6 foot long wooden bench. There were not connections to this bench other than the four wooden legs on the floor. This bench was used only to dismantle the metal case of equipment he was working on and he would transfer the internal makings to the other work bench. He had opened up a radio and laid the case next to the electronics, then left his house to go shopping. When the came back the found that a storm had come through the area. Lightening had struck his outside antenna, traveled down the RF wires into the house, through his radio. The radio suffered 1 blown resistor and a capacitor. However, the radio sitting on the bench with nothing attached to it looked like an ARC welder had sliced right through the middle of it. The lightening had then jumped the table, went inot an electrical plug on the wall, traveled up the wired and blew some components in his refrigerator.
I wonder why it didn't got to ground from his antenna which was grounded.
Lightening is the most unpredictable element in the world.
Most likely, the vast majority of the lightning did go through his ground rod. By the old saying about electricity taking the path of least resistance is only partially true; it takes every path it can find. You can see this in your motorhome right now. If you have more than 1 light bulb on, the electricity doesn't just go to the one with the least resistance, it will go to all of them that are on. Lightning act the same way. Lets say that a bolt of lightning is 2 million volts ( I just pulled that # out of my a$$), and his ground rod had a very good ground with only 2 ohms of resistance, but the lightning found another path to ground though your buddy's work bench that had 20 million ohms(made that up, too) also.
Ohms law tells us that the ground rod saw 1 million amps, and his work bench got .1 amps at 2 million volts or a total of 200,000 watts, which was enough to fry his electronics. The hope of ground Protection is that the majority of the electricity will flow through it and the amount of amperage through other paths will be low enough to not damage anything, but with a direct lightning strike, all bet are off.
Curious Question... Lightning
in Type A motorhomes
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Most likely, the vast majority of the lightning did go through his ground rod. By the old saying about electricity taking the path of least resistance is only partially true; it takes every path it can find. You can see this in your motorhome right now. If you have more than 1 light bulb on, the electricity doesn't just go to the one with the least resistance, it will go to all of them that are on. Lightning act the same way. Lets say that a bolt of lightning is 2 million volts ( I just pulled that # out of my a$$), and his ground rod had a very good ground with only 2 ohms of resistance, but the lightning found another path to ground though your buddy's work bench that had 20 million ohms(made that up, too) also.
Ohms law tells us that the ground rod saw 1 million amps, and his work bench got .1 amps at 2 million volts or a total of 200,000 watts, which was enough to fry his electronics. The hope of ground Protection is that the majority of the electricity will flow through it and the amount of amperage through other paths will be low enough to not damage anything, but with a direct lightning strike, all bet are off.