Fourier and Lightning

As I spend my night trying to finish up my project and and homework for my class, I decided to procrastinate some more.  I'll be honest, my streak of straight A's might come to an end tomorrow after I take my final, and that is definitely caused from the lack of effort that I put into this class...but if somehow by the grace of God I breeze through the final, then the streak will live on.  My class is called Signals and Systems, which is pretty much an extension of calculus with emphasis on Fourier Systems and Transforms.

To give a quick idea of what Fourier is, for those who don't know what it is, you are pretty much taking a signal, lets say a sound wave, and pretty much looking at the frequency harmonics of the wave, and at least for my degree in Electrical Engineering, you would have a signal and when you are breaking down the harmonics, you look at how different components of your signal will affect your systems that you are sending your signal to.  Now Fourier is used everywhere and for a lot of different things and that is the beauty of it. It will definitely be a subject that I will get more in-depth with. Once I have a better understanding of it, I will have to share what I find.

Anyway, earlier this evening as I left my parents house after visiting with my sisters, I started watching a storm off to the northeast of where I was at, I decided to take a little longer drive home to watch the storm, mainly the lightning. I have always been fascinated with lightning, and tonight watching the storm, it got my wheels spinning.  What if I could take a Tesla coil(not the car company) and use it to draw the lightning to strike it. Once it strikes it, would I be able to harness the energy and electricity it produces? Seems like a thought that might be possible.

The other night I was reading an article on EMP's(Electromagnetic Pulse) and I was drawn to how this could be used as a weapon(and I wouldn't put it past any government in the world to be developing it, if they haven't already), which would bring devastation for our society. Think Dark Ages again multiplied by 100.  Now to bring this all together, since electromagnetic waves are pretty much sine waves, this is where Fourier would definitely help me to understand these waves better, as well as my Electromagnetic Physics class soon.   Now what if I can take a Tesla coil and use it to absorb the EMP, thus eliminating the chance that the EMP would do any devastating damage. Possible? Well anything is possible. Difficult? You bet. I like challenges though.  Till the next randomness of my head.

J