Spark vs Lightning?

Question

How are sparks and lightning similar?

Answer 1

they are both in the electromagnetic category and they are both forms of electricity and both are caused by friciton of two surfaces and both get discharged from one of the friciton surfaces and both are stored until discharged

Answer 2

Sparks and lightning are essentially the same scientific phenomena but one is large and one is small. Lightning is caused by static electricity forming within the clouds as they move past the earth - this would be similar to rubbing a latex balloon on your hair. The major difference is the amount of voltage built up. Greater static electricity build up means greater arcing distance. The reason why lightning is big is because there is nothing for the lightning to arc to. That's why lightening arcs to the tallest thing around. When it builds up enough static charge to arc, it will. So it essentially has a static charge that needs to be grounded and when the clouds containing this static charge run across a flagpole or tall tree it give an opportunity for the cloud to discharge it's static electricity.

No a spark, on the other hand, is small. The reason is that something grounded is available to arc to. The more voltage, the longer (and larger) the spark. So if you rub your feet on the carpet and then get a spark touching the door knob, it's because you came within a very close distance of the door knob. Now, if you rubbed your feet on the carpet for a very long time and built up a huge charge, you could get a spark from the door knob from 10 feet away (or more, depending on the static charge you built up).

This is how an arc welder works. It draws electricity from the receptacle (plug) on the wall and converts it to a very high voltage. As the volts increase, it allows the metal from the welder to create an arc to the metal you're working with.

Another example is the Van Der Graph (sp) generator. It runs a belt on a loop to free electrons from the belt onto the metal of the van der graph. The negative ions released from the belt will seek out the shortest possible path to ground (or neutral). This means that when you touch that big steel ball on the top, the build up static electricity in the Van Der Graph will arc to you so as to neutralize the charge that it's carrying. This is the same thing as lightning but on a smaller (and safer) scale.

Answer 3

QUESTION OF VOLTAGE and volume
THIS IS LIGHTNING and this is a spark of static electricity
a spark plug is DC current at a somewhat high voltage that is if u r touching it it would hurt is different and is not static

Answer 4

Both are interchange of charges, positive and negative.

Answer 5

electricity