A drawing of the Lightning Foundry

Local scientist Greg Leyh is fascinated by lightning — the way "fairly docile" clouds can charge "thousands and thousands of bolts." And he's not alone in his fascination, as the question of how lightning originates has been a source of consternation for researchers for years. While theories abound, no concrete answers exist.

“It makes sense,” Leyh says, “Since it occurs where you can’t get to.”

But Leyh thinks he may be able to bring researchers closer to solving the mystery if he can do one thing: conjure up a 200 foot bolt of lightning. Leyh’s organization, Lightning on Demand, a group of “electrical enthusiasts”, think they can accomplish this. They’re calling the project “The Lightning Foundry.”

Leyh is an electrical engineer by trade who has worked conducting physics experiments in the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory ("You know, the world’s largest linear accelerator?”)

He’s also no stranger to scientific feats—he built the world’s largest Tesla Coil in 1997.

Called the “Electrum”, it stands four stories high. The Electrum was commissioned by a New Zealand art patron, Alan Gibbs, and it lives on his farm in Auckland. Tesla Coils (created by the 19th century inventor Nikola Tesla) are high-voltage apparatus that shoot out impressive discharges. In other words, they’re man-made lightning machines.

To create the lightning bolt, Leyh believes he has to build two much larger Tesla Coils than the one he’s already built. The coils will stand ten stories high, and they’ll live in a space about the size of a football field. While he thinks it would be nice if the coils lived in the Bay Area, it’s more likely they’ll find a home in Nevada, where Leyh says it’s “dry, and cheap” and there is sufficient land to locate the coils where they won’t disturb people. Leyh says the “acoustics could be potentially loud”.

To pay for this experiment Leyh has launched a Kickstarter campaign with a fundraising goal of $348,000—a price tag he calls a bargain considering the labor (his and his collaborators’) will be free. (He calculated that the cost of the project is equal to the amount the U.S. spends on pizzas every seven minutes.) So far, they’ve raised $23,033.

The Lightning Foundry is designed to be accessible to the public with lectures, and if the project exceeds its funding goal, the money will be used to “enhance” performances. Already, people have been suggesting possible experiments for the giant coils (like studying the impact of lightning on aircraft) but Leyh has one special feat in mind: to recreate Ben Franklin’s kite experiment and perhaps use the discharges to split open whole trees.

Since what Leyh is striving for has never been accomplished, he’s not quite sure what the safety implications are.

“When we first turn it on, I’ll be standing way far back, “ He said, “Maybe 200 feet away in a steel cage.”