Originally posted by Prosody
Of course, in the college physics lab we used a rubber mat and the business end of a VanDeGraaff generator to play wizard--build up a charge and with the index finger zap a passerby from a distance of about three feet.
This is what I was thinking, that in the highly charged region under the power line it wouldn't take much for a static charge to arc the 2-3 cm from the rim to the ground