Inferring Thunderstorm Properties from Electric Field Observations — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

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Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
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A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

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Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Inferring Thunderstorm Properties from Electric Field Observations

Name: Eric Schmitt
Major: Physics
Hometown: Chatham, Illinois
Faculty Sponsor: Brant Carlson
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: NOYCE/SURE

Abstract

Lightning discharges, both intracloud and cloud-to-ground, lead to changes in electric field below the cloud that can be recorded with the use of a device known as an electric field mill. Electric field mills operate by rotating a grounded shield over an electrode to charge and discharge the electrode—which it then measures. Measurements of this charge oscillation can be then calibrated by applying known electric fields to the device and fitting a curve to the calibration data. This process was used to calibrate a field mill so as to analyze data from a thunderstorm that was approximately 16.8 miles away from the mill on June 15^th, 2018 and showed that the replenishing current of the storm was 3.5 amps.

Poster file