What is significant about an area of one square foot?
A. One square foot is a nice round number. It turns out (see Concepts) that a typical lightning current flowing uniformly out of a 1 ft2 ground area immersed in salt water generates a fairly low voltage of about 11kV. However, even in sea water sideflashes have caused hull damage when there was too large a distance between the mast and the grounding surface and the connecting cable was too close to the hull. In fresh water the voltages generated are large enough to cause sideflashes from multiple conducting fittings. As Thomson,1991 concludes “the 1 ft2 is shown to be hopelessly inadequate to prevent sideflashes in fresh water”. In fact, of more importance than the area is the shape of the grounding surface. A square 1 ft2 plate has a grounding resistance of 0.36 ohm. In contrast, our HStripTM with dimensions of 0.36″ x 2″ has only half the area but less resistance (0.29 ohm). Also, if we split the traditional one square foot area into two strips, we can place each near the periphery o
