I was just vacuuming the house and I got to the last room and it started to smell so bad. It lost power and smelt like something was burring. It is a $70 dirt devil. We have 3 dogs and a baby on the way. We live near a beach so our dogs are always bringing in sand and dead grass. I found a good deal on the Oreck XL21 it is normally a $750 vacuum I found it for $315.00. Should I bite the bullet and buy it? OR wait and save my money and use the crappy one we have? I don't know what to do. I feel the new Vacuum is something I need. I want a clean house for my baby. BUY IT OR NOT?
We do NOT have the technology now. There is no good way to store electricity. Batteries are the best we have, and they are expensive, heavy and toxic. For example, to store the energy in a gallon of gasoline, it would take several hundreds of pounds of batteries. Capacitors are even less efficient. And the amount of energy you can get from lightning is actually very small, not worth the trouble to collect it. Sure the volts and amps are high, but the time duration is short, and they occur very infrequently. And the technology to capture millions of volts at hundreds of thousands of amps does not exist either. .
You have received two good answers. I will only give you what I read in Practical Boat Owner years ago: If you have a sailboat with an aluminum mast, if the lightning is to hit the water within a radius roughly equal to the height of your mast, it will work as an attractor and hit the mast. If your mast is grounded, i.e. in electrical connection to the sea water, it will hit it if the lightning is to hit the sea in a radius of one and half the height of your mast. For my sailboat, I have done this: From the mast foot, resting on the keel, I have a very thick copper plate going to a keel bolt but not in direct contact; with a thin separation, yet large surface. That way the mast is not earthed (incidentally, the sea water is the best earth you can find) but should it be hit by the lightning, it will jump the tiny gap as if it didn't existed. This technique of having a lightning rod with a gap is used by radio amateurs (my callsign LA0HA) to protect their antenna. In my case, I also use my ham radio when sailing, having my backstay as an antenna and i don't want to have an earthed mast.
