I thought this YouTube video of power lines playing jump rope was really cute. It took a bit of work to make this video. And it looks like it has been around for a couple years.
But to show how serious this is, I thought I should explain a few things about these high voltage power lines. Generally these are called transmission lines because they get the electric power from the generation point to points where it is distributed. Because generation points such as power plants make such a huge amount of electric power, the power lines have to be very heavy and high above the ground, on pylons as seen in the video.
I’ve seen the ‘wires’ lying on the ground before they were hung on the pylon at a huge switchyard near where I live. This ‘wire’ is very large, about 1.5 inches or 38 mm in diameter. That’s a lot bigger than a typical wire. Even though the wire is mostly aluminum, it is still very heavy. The insulators that hold them up must carry many tons of weight.
But the truly amazing thing about these lines is the amount of electric power they carry. They can handle billions of watts, in other words, millions of kilowatts, or thousands of megawatts. That’s enough to power a large city of a million people. You can see videos of maintenance workers working on these live power lines on YouTube.
The current is thousands of amps, and the voltage is hundreds of thousands of volts – one common American voltage is 245,000 volts or a quarter million volts. The arc can be wider than your outstretched hand. If these lines were to come close to each other or to the ground, there would be huge sparks, like lightning. If you got between the lines, you would be burned up in fireball in a few seconds. BZZZZT! Crispy critter!
So if you see those power lines playing jump rope, watch out! Sparks will be flying in an instant! 😉
