![]() ![]() It branched at the top, and had a far from linear cable attached to it. It wasn't feeding directly into the ground giving it a straight, clean path like a normal lightning rod would. The antenna was not a lightning rod, it was a conduit/conductor. If it strikes a big metal antenna that's connected to a building, it will break some stuff. When lightning strikes a tree, the whole thing explodes and or catches fire. It's not a clean energy transfer by any means. Lightning is incredibly volatile, for lack of a better term. ![]() If it's got enough power to arc from the sky to the ground, it's going to arc from a cable to a clock that's a foot for two away. Even without an explosion, the lightning is so powerful and erratic that it would arc to every piece of metal even close to it. Even if the cable were to divert the lightning away from the clock, there would be an explosion. It's not a small amount of energy by any stretch of the imagination. The existing answers make very valid points, but may also be overthinking it. So based on the resistance within the time machine this could actually mean that most - and not just a bit - of the lightning's power interacts with the clock (read: destroys it). Before the Flux Capacitor could act as some kind of current limiter, which is no longer possible. However, it changes a lot for the clock! Due to the clock now being parallel to the rest of the circuit, there'll be a most likely significant higher voltage and current involved now. Let's have a look at the updated circuit:Īs you can see, this changes nothing for Doc. So it seems like Doc intentionally used the hands of the clock as some kind of cable relief (otherwise he would have unplugged it when he attempted to slide down). He's like a bird sitting on a power line.Įdit: After watching the scene over and over again (after reading Valorum's answer), I noticed that you can actually see that the top end of that cable is connected to another cable, which goes straight up to the antenna. So the actual (simplified) circuit looks most likely like this:Īlso note that despite Doc holding the cable, he's essentially short-circuited out (meaning there's essentially almost no potential difference between his hand and therefore next to no energy flowing through him), which allows him to survive this (at least on a Hollywood level of physics being applied, considering the halo around the cable, etc.). Worst case it could have been that the clock provides a lower resistance towards ground, which would have caused most (if not all) of the electricity not going through the cable and time machine. ![]() If Doc wanted to protect the clock, he'd most likely been able to attach the cable to the flag pole/antenna instead, but it's also likely that this might have screwed the whole circuit, since we don't know the actual resistance of the clock compared to the cable and flux capacitor. The electricity then continues through the clock, over the hands and then the cable.Īs such the whole energy is not diverted from the clock, but rather pulled through it directly. ![]() If you stop the video linked by Paulie at the right moment, you'll see the lightning striking the highest point of the building (which actually makes sense):Īs you see, the lightning strikes that small antenna or flag pole on top, not the pointers of the clock. However, the wrong assumption is that the clock is not part of the circuit, because it actually is! The power flows through the cable, that's correct. ![]()
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