The Cage That Swallows Lightning

In 1836, English scientist Michael Faraday climbed inside a wire mesh cage and invited his colleagues to blast it with enormous electrical discharges. Sparks crackled across the exterior. Voltage surged through the metal frame. Yet inside that cage, Faraday sat unharmed, calm as a man reading the morning paper. The structure he had built — now called a Faraday cage — channeled every destructive charge around the surface and into the ground, leaving the interior perfectly still and safe.…