[SiVal]

The article says lightning rods don't attract lightning. They just give it a safe path to ground. That makes no sense. Lightning pushes (& pulls) against resistance. Most current will follow the path of least resistance. A lightning rod is installed with two parts: 1) a "rod" that just by itself is designed to attract the strike to a sharpened electric field, and 2) a least-resistance path to ground in order to attract the current to follow that path instead of some other. That bolt in the photo extending upward is current being pulled up from the ground (or pushed down) with low resistance to attract the searching fingers of the bolt coming down from the cloud. The bolts reaching up to connect are going to be the most attractive to the bolt coming down.

So how is it that "lightning rods don't attract lightning"? Maybe they just mean that they won't cause electrical storms.

[tlb]

As I understand it, the distance over which the increased field gradient from a sharpened rod is greater than the variation in field gradient due to rain & wind is pretty small. Once the discharge has ionized the air to within several meters of the rod it'll probably find it, but it might not get close enough.

[ot]

I think it means that they do not cause lightning that would not have happened if the rod wasn't there. They just steer sparks that would have happened anyway.

[yencabulator]

People used to be afraid of installing them. That was essentially a marketing slogan saying you won't get more lightning because of the rod.

I think this photo is great proof that the rods don't really make the lightning deviate from its path by much, it's more that instead of hitting the building it'll flow through the safe route to ground.