Why you don’t make right-angle traces and why lightning rods are pointy

After I posted the menorah yesterday where I said in passing that you’re not supposed to have circuit traces bend at right angles, I got a few questions from readers asking exactly why this is.  The explanation is kind of complicated and involves some of Maxwell’s equations as well as multivariable calculus, but I’ll do my best to explain it in a way that doesn’t require any special knowledge of either of these topics.  This is going to be a doozy, so read on if you dare.

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