I surely did knot!

Now, that makes sense.

Pretty sure that was to prevent the wire damaging the fuse holder or power transformer leads, caused by kids yanking on the power cord. Not all TVs/radios/amplifiers had a good strain relief.

If you are grounding something,such as antenna mast or Dish, the copper ground wire (strap is better) should be connected to the bare metal of the pipe/tower/mast and covered in corrosion inhibitor to keep out oxygen and water.
The preferred transition should be a brass lug.

Galvanized towers as an example. The ground connection point needs to be on the bare steel and not the galvanized top layer.

Notice the word MAY?


In other words it MAY not.



That said, we need a volunteer to be the nearby object..... :-)

Julie, this is really funny. Which is to say, while there are germs of truth in here, overall it sounds like exaggeration that results in hokum.

The writing has all the sincerity and grammar of an email I got last week from a Nigerian prince.

Check out this article on the Edison Knot: [Link: edisonbulbs.net] No, not the way you tie a tie, but the way you interleave two wires inside a plug or a light socket so that neither wire can be pulled out. Gee, it looks like the image in #6!


And Brent knows well that a spark gap is a gap. That is, it's a place where two wires are NOT connected together, but are precisely spaced for some reason. Two wires twisted inside a wire nut make a connection. That's not a gap.

With regard to lightning, a spark gap is used as a path that's a lower impedance to ground than the wiring. I vaguely remember that there IS a knot or a coiling of the wire right after a spark gap. Here's a spark gap, the kind that might be in a Tesla coil:






That sounds like deep logic applied to a silly premise. Just my opinion.


You may have just been wrong for writing that!

I volunteer Ken to be the new human Jacob's Ladder! (it might improve your eye sight?)

Won't stop it but some of the voltage may leave the cable at the kink. Very true.

Did you know that gullible is not in the dictionary?

My only potential for accuracy here comes down to the quality of the connection


Well of course I was, again just ask my (long suffering) wife.

One thing interesting about this, Google turns up about the same amount of results supporting the knot theory as it does claiming it's a BS. But almost everyone for the knot has a different explination as to why it works

The knot adds a little bit of series inductance. A "choke" if you like. In theory, this will tend to limit the inrush current associated with the lightning strike. As a practical matter, I don't think that this is a major benefit. A few turns around a nail or ferrite bead will tend to add a similar effect. I'm not so sure that many would recommend knotting the network cable associated with a gigabit network.

The inductance represents a series impedance for the high frequency components of that leading edge. Of course, this this might offer a mild protection from nearby induced strikes, but a direct strike will likely have enough potential to simply jump across that impedance and damage the equipment anyway.

Bottom line for me: "Urban Myth". I would never substitute this trick for serious lightning protection.

Inductance!!!
Tear open a surge protector (especially a Panamax) and notice one of the 1st things in the circuit path = a small donut magnet with just a few winds of wire around it (a small inductor).
A knot in a wire does similar, only not as effective.

Again, this was a popular theory back in the days of vacuum tubes and those large solid state devices. They could survive pretty good surges on their own. Tying a knot in the power cable, helped a few devices survive some pretty big surges. And the practice was born. Back then, good surge protectors were far and few between (and very expensive).

There is science behind this, but just tying a knot in a power cable does NOT give any significant protection these days for our sensitive electronic devices. But one could argue that it helps a little overall.

. Tying a knot in the power cable, helped a few devices survive some pretty big surges. And the practice was born. Back then, good surge protectors were far and few between (and very expensive).

The only thing the knot did was keep the cable from being disconnected from the TV chassis when some one pulled on the AC cord.

Years ago lightning came into our client's home via one of the outdoor speaker wires. It then proceeded to fry all of the speakers in the house ( about 10 pair). There were a lot of 90 degree bends in the wiring throughout the house, so I gotta call BS on this.