WHAT IS LIGHTNING?
Embry‑Riddle Air Force ROTC Cadets Climb Onboard Air Force’s Largest Plane ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY SETH ROBBINS WITH EMBRY‑RIDDLE’S NEWS TEAM
Lightning in a Bottle: Embry‑Riddle Team Seeks the Origins of Its Spark. ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY SETH ROBBINS WITH EMBRY‑RIDDLE’S NEWS TEAM
Lightning (noun) light-ning A giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere between clouds, the air or the ground. In the early stages of development, air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground.
For dozens of Air Force ROTC cadets at Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University, a tour of a C-5M Super Galaxy — which can carry two M1 Abrams tanks — inspired awe and provided insights into the inner workings of the Air Force’s largest plane.
Though Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod nearly 300 years ago, lightning remains one of nature’s most powerful yet least understood phenomena.
The tours of the C-5M Super Galaxy, parked at Sheltair at Daytona Beach International Airport, came courtesy of Maj. David Cryder, assistant director of operations for the 9th Airlift Squadron and a 2014 graduate of Embry‑Riddle. Cryder also served as a cadet with Detachment 157 at the Daytona Beach Campus, the same unit as the cadets who eagerly scaled the C-5M Super Galaxy, which stands 65 feet tall, equivalent to a building of more than six stories.
Lt. Austin Wood, who was among the 9th Airlift Squadron team showing the plane’s flight operations, explained that the C-5M Super Galaxy requires a crew of at least nine for an overseas mission, including two flight engineers, three pilots, two loadmasters and two crew chiefs. “It’s a very crew-intensive plane,” he said. “So we try to emphasize that moving forward, you’re going to need to be a team player to succeed.” For Cryder, it’s not the plane’s size that he likes to tout but the crew and their mission, which he said have made his time with the C-5M Super Galaxy so rewarding. “We’ll go through some of our locations moving our cargo, and the crew becomes like your family,” he said. By having the cadets tour the plane and speak to its crew members, Cryder also wanted to give them a glimpse of what their futures hold once they become commissioned officers. “They are now in charge of other people, and you are expected to rise to the occasion,” he said. That future is near for Bradley Rhoads, cadet wing commander for Detachment 157, who will graduate in December of this year with a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering.
Novel research by Dr. Jeremy A. Riousset and his team could reveal important clues about how lightning is formed. The research has implications for the safety of power systems, aircraft, rocket launches and even human missions to Mars. “The very first question we are trying to answer is, ‘How does lightning start?’” said Dr. Riousset, an associate professor of Engineering Physics. This also happens to be one of the most fundamental unanswered questions in atmospheric sciences. Lightning is a natural discharge of electricity caused by positive and negative imbalances of electric charges — usually within clouds or between clouds and the ground. “It’s high voltage, it’s a high current, it’s super bright and it’s super hot,” said Engineering Physics master’s student Jared Nelson, a member of Riousset’s research team. However, prior to this hot energetic event occurs “a glow,” a lower- voltage discharge that is different from a lightning bolt visible from the ground. This glow was once known to sailors as St. Elmo’s fire: a luminous blue or violet glow seen on the tops of ships’ masts when storm clouds were overhead. The team’s experiments could have safety implications on Earth and beyond.
HOW’S IT MADE? Thunderstorms have bits of ice and water that bump into each other, creating a buildup of electric charge.
It’s a pretty surreal moment to be bringing this plane to where it all started and to show the next generation of cadets what their life could look like if they stay in the books and keep working hard. Maj. David Cryder | Assistant Director of Operations for the 9th Airlift Squadron
CHARGE SEPARATION Some parts of the cloud become positively charged, and other parts become negatively charged.
Cryder’s aviation journey did not begin with the idea that he “was going to fly the world’s largest cargo aircraft,” he said. He graduated with a B.S. in Applied Meteorology and then trained as a pilot after he was commissioned as a lieutenant. “As I’ve looked back over the last ten years, I am incredibly thankful that I ended up in this airplane, which was part of my motivation of bringing the asset here,” he said. “I want the cadets to know that there’s more to being an Air Force pilot than necessarily being a fighter pilot or a bomber pilot. There are a litany of options available to them.” Cadets climbed to the upper-level flight deck, where they sat at the plane’s controls. They also toured the massive cargo bay and an upper level that contains the crew’s rest area.
THE SPARK When the charges become too strong, they jump across the air as a massive electrical current, which we see as lightning.
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