Saint Elmo's Fire

Saint Elmo's fire

[′sānt ′el·mōz ′fīr]

(electricity)

A visible electric discharge, sometimes seen on the mast of a ship, on metal towers, and on projecting parts of aircraft, due to concentration of the atmospheric electric field at such projecting parts.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Saint Elmo’s Fire

 

electrical discharges in the atmosphere in the form of flashing brushes occasionally observed on high pointed objects, such as towers, masts, lone trees, and mountain tops. The phenomenon was named in the Middle Ages after Saint Elmo’s Church, on the towers of which it was frequently observed.

Saint Elmo’s fire arises when the electrostatic intensity in the atmosphere at a point reaches a magnitude of the order of 500 volts per meter or higher, which occurs most often during thunderstorms or upon the approach of such storms; in the winter, it occurs during blizzards. Physically, Saint Elmo’s fire is a special type of corona discharge (seeCORONA DISCHARGE).

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.