Raindrops Are Tiny Lightning Bolts And Theyre Corroding Cars Study Finds
The standard explanation for why rain causes corrosion is that water carries dissolved salts and acids to a surface, constant drumming of raindrops abrades whatever protective coating is on it, and oxygen does the rest. Nearly all our tools to prevent this—paints, polymer films, or oxide layers—are built around this idea. But we’ve apparently been missing something important about the rain. A new study led by Zhongyuan Ni, Rüdiger Berger, and Hans-Jürgen Butt at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, has shown that water drops routinely arrive at a surface carrying an electrical charge large enough to punch through an insulating coating. Not scratch it. Not slowly dissolve it. Electrically blow a hole in it, the way a spark jumps a gap. Charged rain The starting point of the study is a phenomenon called "slide electrification," which has only been properly quant
