Science question regarding fulminology.

For those of you who understand physics better than I do, How would I go about creating a guided lightning strike going ten meters using telekinesis at the molecular level? I'm trying to do a type of magic a bit more grounded in real life physics than these things tend to be, making a mage capable of wind magic and various weather-based techniques.

Also, If anyone knows if someone has written on such things, could you point me in the right direction?

Electrolasers aka Laser-induced-plasma-channels already do that sort of thing.

Tesla also allegedly worked on making controllable lightning.

That's great, now I just have to find the math behind it.

Eh, I know there was a program some years ago were a missile was launched into a storm and acted a sort of mid air lightning rod and it somehow directed it to a target on the ground. Dunno what became of it though, seemed really impractical

^ I know there's a project going on for the US Army to make controllable lightning. They even had a pic of the thing in action on one of the military magazine websites. (I think one of the sources was Wired.)

You say that the character in question has telekinesis on a molecular level — does this extend down to the sub-atomic? If so, he or she might be able to "manually" direct the electrons (or positive ions) of the lightning in the desired direction.

@Le Garcon: James May's Man Lab actually tried it with model rockets (they failed, although mostly for lack of being able to find a proper storm).

Nope, just things that are comprised mainly of a cloud of molecules(e.g. water vapor, gases, dust)

I love that show and I saw that bit. But the thing I remember was I think some Discovery Channel documentary, it was a US army trial using much more expensive missiles. Can't for the life of me remember the name. Still same principle

Generate charge, create a path of least resistance for it to travel along the air, release charge. It's conceptually very simple to create a directed lightning strike. The tricks in the second stage and how to create a path of ionized air.