Recent Results in Thunderstorm Electrification - Figure 3
Fig. 3. The resulting reversal lines achieved are highly dependent on experimental technique, which in turn affects the microphysics of the interacting particles’ surfaces, and to which the results are very sensitive. Different researchers over the years have achieved different reversal lines and this led to contention in the literature over who was right. At the time, it was not clear that the microphysics played such an important roll in the outcome, nor that the choice of experimental arrangement had such a critical influence. Recently we have gained an understanding into how the microphysics determines results (based around the Relative Growth Rate theory) such as to be able to reproduce the results of others, supporting our suspicions.