Re: Can lightning give you electricity?

Well, lightning IS electricity.  A bolt of lightning is nothing more than
a gigantic spark of electrical energy.

Now, it seems you are asking why we couldn't use that to power our homes,
instead of generating electricity ourselves.  There are two reasons why
we cannot:

First, lightning is not very reliable.  It is only around when there is
a storm, and then it is difficult to make it strike exactly where you 
want it to.

Secondly, lightning is just TOO POWERFUL for us to harness it.  Even if
we could channel the power of a lightning bolt somewhere, we would have
to have some battery large enough to store the electricity, since
lightning discharges a vast amount of electricity all at once.  That
amount is so vast, though, that we would not be able to handle it all at
once.

Imagine pouring a bucket of water onto a piece of paper that has a pinhole
in it.  A little bit of the water might go through the hole, but the vast
amount of it will just spill over the paper, because the hole is too small
to carry that amount of water all at once.  Usually, when lightning
hits a power pole around here, the transformers explode or the wires are
blasted off of their mountings, because of the sudden surge of power.