“Only every now and then the room is briefly illuminated by the glow of brilliant lightning flashing through the twilight in the rain and hail” (but the video conference via cell phone is stopped)
When the big bang happens, I’m standing in the lecture hall explaining something to the master’s students about the role of voltage-gated sodium ion channels in pain transmission. It’s a scary moment when suddenly there’s a bang and at the same moment all the technology goes out, the two monitors diagonally next to me, the projector, the ceiling light, and then the twilight from outside barely illuminates the room.
Well, it shouldn’t have been all that surprising. It was announced that there could be local storms and thunderstorms and that these could be severe. But when I left my office and walked over to the lecture hall building, it was just a little drizzle; Now, an hour later, the sky has opened up and it’s raining, hailing, thundering and lightning all around us. Some students are already thinking about whether they might have to spend the night at the university. But local storms don’t usually last that long. Well, in any case, lightning apparently just struck an important line and completely switched off the power supply.
Since the Corona period, I have been broadcasting lectures that I give to students in the lecture hall from the lecture hall via video conference and recording them. Depending on what the students want. We have tracking cameras in the lecture halls that either follow me or, when I make a simple hand gesture, pan to the board. Of course, one can use many well-known good and bad arguments to discuss the pros and cons of both lecture recordings and live broadcasts. But alas, for some students there may also be good and not so good reasons not to attend a course in person. Of course, I enjoy working together with students in the lecture hall more, and it would probably make more sense to offer a completely online course than a broadcast or recording from the lecture hall – but there are complicated framework conditions and I try to do that in this way Giving students different opportunities to participate.
In any case, this lightning strike suddenly stopped the lecture transmission and recording – since the computer also failed. I think about and look at the situation with the students in the lecture hall: The light still cannot be turned on, and of course the computer cannot be started either.
I can’t even raise the blinds, which are half-drawn to protect me from the sun, to let more of the twilight outside into the lecture hall. WiFi in the university building is also down; Some students say they no longer have a mobile network on their cell phone, but I see a mobile network on my smartphone.
I’m a little worried because I turned on my laptop in my office and left it plugged in: it used to be said that you should unplug your technology during a thunderstorm; I used to do that too, but that was a long time ago. Well, I hope that the lightning strike didn’t cause a major voltage spike in the network.
I use my cell phone to log into the video conference with the students who are taking part in the lecture from home. They had already heard about the power outage via a shared WhatsApp group. The whole place is without electricity.
Of course I can continue my lecture without the Powerpoint slides; we have very good – but rarely used – chalkboards in the lecture halls, which are now being used in unexpected ways. However, it is a bit dark in the lecture hall, with no overhead light and little light from outside. It sounds exactly like something out of a dime novel, but in fact it is exactly like that: only every now and then the room is briefly illuminated by the glow of brilliant lightning flashing through the twilight in the rain and hail. I will therefore just finish with a few thoughts on the sodium ion channels; We were just in the middle of thinking about how these can be influenced pharmacologically and what this has to do with cardiac arrhythmias. I want to at least finish the topic. The students in the video conference stay involved via my cell phone with a cellular connection. Somehow I use the opportunity to spontaneously calculate with the students an estimate of the magnitude of the electrical current strength in a lightning strike (approx. 100,000 A) and compare that with the current strength through an ion channel (a few pA) (i.e. roughly a factor). 10^17). Then I end the lecture in the twilight a little earlier than planned.
The power is still not back on, so I go over to the laboratory rooms to check on the refrigerators. I hear the refrigerators beeping desperately, they can do this with a built-in battery. But I cannot enter the laboratory because the electronic locking system cannot read my chip card without a power supply. It doesn’t matter, at the moment it’s probably best to just leave the refrigerators and freezers closed so that they keep the cold as well as possible for the duration of the power outage. I trust that it won’t take long for the responsible network operator to restore power. I also see that the door to the laboratory wing has, in addition to the chip reader, a mechanical lock for a key. The caretaker can definitely tell me this if the power outage lasts longer.
The thought briefly crosses my mind to get a coffee before the next lecture, but of course the coffee machine in the foyer is also out of order without electricity.
I’m chatting a bit with a colleague who’s also trying to figure out how to give the next lecture without electricity, and I see the technical operations manager hurrying past outside. He’s obviously not bored right now. I’ll see if I can help him with anything; he checks fuses and devices. A little later the ceiling lights come on again. I can now restart the computer in the lecture hall, but I can’t log in again yet; Apparently the intranet that is needed for authentication is not back yet. There are still five minutes until my next lecture and students are making a mess.
One minute before the start of the next lecture, the login worked again and the projector, etc., was not damaged. In total, the power was gone for well over half an hour after the lightning strike. I can’t remember the last time I experienced such a relatively long and widespread power outage.
(Clemens Möller)