If matter can not appear nor dissapear, I was wondering why a lightning bolt dissapears all too soon,..`?

Question

I mean does it touch the ground and thus is absorbed,.. or all that energy turn into light and it happens away,... an example would be I guess if I were to rephrase this with sound, I would ask about why the sound weakens in an echo, where does all that sound go,.......Say in a sealed shut room with no opening why isn"t it that we cant hear an echo repeat and repeat and repeat and so on for ever if it is in a sealed shut room with no openings?

Answer 1

Basically any time an action is performed, energy is lost in the form of thermal radiation, aka heat (which we cannot see or hear.) A sound wave is basically a vibration, it weakens over time because as it travels, it gradually runs out of the energy that is needed to push the air (which creates the sound.)

Answer 2

In sound as in the lightning, the energy is transferred to another form and dissipated. So your question isn't about matter disappearing and reappearing, it's about energy converting to other forms. I'll answer this question in 4 parts: the first, on lightning, the second on sound, and the third on conservation of matter. Then I'll tell ya something weird about Quantum Mechanics just for fun, but related.

First, lightning is caused by a potential difference (a voltage) between two clouds or between the cloud and the ground. This potential difference causes a current to flow in order to minimize the potential difference (aka, minimize the difference in charge). This current causes the gas molecules to ionize through the electrons gaining energy. As the electrons recombine with the molecules, they lose energy in the form of a photon (light). This emission of photons along the path of the current is what you see as lightning. So the energy from the electrical voltage is given off as light.

For sound echoing in a closed room, the walls of the room (and any objects within the room, and ignoring the loss of sound energy due to the motion of the air) absorb the sound through vibration. Some of the sound is reflected back, but everytime a little bit more of its energy goes to vibrating the walls. This energy is lost in the form of thermal energy - the walls heat up.

So, as you can see, no matter is being lost or created in each of the situations you proposed, so it has nothing to do with your question. BUT, let's talk about matter and energy conversion briefly since it's related. In chemical reactions, it is true that no matter is created or destroyed. So we say Mass is Conserved in a chemical reaction (or that the binding energies of the electrons involved in the reaction is much much smaller than any of the mass energies present, therefore the effects aren't measurable). That's not the case for nuclear reactions. In a nuclear reaction, enough energy is involved to change the overall mass of before and after the reaction. So mass is NOT conserved. You can see this by comparing the mass of, say, a helium nucleus to the sum of the individual masses of 2 nuetrons and 2 protons. The He nucleus has LESS mass since the mass energy is turned into binding energy. So Mass is not really a conserved quantity.

It gets even weirder. Quantum Field Theory tells us that massive particles pop in and out of existance all the time. This is in violation of the Law of Conservation of Energy - if new matter appears from no where then the energy in a system increases according to E=mc^2. However, Heinsenburg's Uncertainty Principle says that Energy Conservation can be violated for extremely short periods of time. So as long as the particles disappear very quickly (this is so quick, that for most practical purposes it never happened), it's OK. These are called virtual particles because they only exist for short periods of time and can't be observed. HOWEVER, they have a measurable effect that has been experimentally confirmed. Look up the Casimir Effect for more information. My point is, that Matter is NOT conserved and it appears and disappears all the time!

Answer 3

I do not tend to remember things in scientific terms because I was predominantly educated to work with children but let me try. Have you ever seen how if you leave red Koolaid or red drink on a white counter how it tends to leave some of the red color and it is harder to remove the longer it is there. Lightening is basically caused by a differential in electical levels as you go up away from the earth such that the water and humidity work as a conducting agent for those two different potentials to cross and even out if I remember correctly my father explaining to me who is an electrical engineer. Basically the energy disapates out into the earth into other things around it etc. It is like turning on and off a light. As long as the electricity is there to make the light keep coming out then it does then when the energy source that creates the light is turned off it disapates is absorbed disapears. You are just basically seeing electrons doing work for you from what I comprehend. They travel around push things around do work for us.

Answer 4

YOUR PREMISE IS TOTALLY WRONG!!!

Matter CAN appear and disappear. Think about what happens in a nuclear bomb. the approx 5 pounds of Uranium\Plutonium is completely changed into energy.

The matter has disappeared as it has changed form into energy. The opposite can happen also. Energy can become matter. Want an example? In the first nanosecond of the Big Bang the only thing that existed in the universe was energy. All the matter in the universe from your own skin to the farthest star came from that initial energy as some of it was converted into hydrogen, helium and lithium. The other elements came later being created inside of the stars themselves.

Answer 5

It is not a physical thing just a flash of light as electrons transfer to equalise the potential difference. The light is turned off as soon as the potential difference between say the cloud and the earth is low enough that it cannot sustain the spark. However where the lightening passed still has evidence such as ionized air for some time.

Answer 6

There are basically two components of a lightning bolt -- a massive flow of electrons and air being superheated by that flow.
The electrons simply transfer from one location to another, like a cloud to ground lightning strike, and continue to exist. The super-heated air cools, its thermal energy being dissipated by the surrounding atmosphere.