Is lightning 2D or 3D?

Question

interesting answers...

if technology permits, and luck of course, someone should do a 'matrix' 360 degrees motion capture of lightning in action and see what its properties are like in temporal 3D!

Answer 1

All real things must be 3D.

Even if you have a drawing on a piece of paper, it may look 2D, but even your pen lines have a depth (although it is very small.)

And in response to Emma Chica - let me assure you Lightning can certainly touch you - and if it touched her she would bl**dy well know about it.

Again, if lightning is light, it is an EM wave and therefore has both a magnetic field perpendicular to an electric field which are both perpendicular to its direction of travel, hence it has 3 components all in different axis.
x-component - mag. field
y-component - electric field
z- component - direction of travel

I love people who'll argue this to death, when really they are know very little about EM radiation and energy transfer.

Answer 2

I think the question can be refined to ask if the pathway of a lightning bolt is in a straight line, or if it moves about in the atmosphere. We all know about the "path of least resistance" but when have you ever seen a lightning bolt start high, go low, and go back up? Never? In the same sense, we see turns left and right and they look like a straight line. However, it is a bright light and can actually be heading in a zig zag in three dimensions. The idea of a matrix-movie camera setup is a great idea, as you would see the lightning bolt in three dimensions as it juts toward the earth.

Answer 3

it would depend on what your def of lightning is, remebering that the 3 definitions we are talking about are length depth and height;

if you're defining it as the passage of current through a gas then possibly you could argue that electrons have no volume - espec if you prescribe to the wave/string theory for electrons (ie chose not to believe it is a particle) therefore no real dimension just e-feild & mag-field which are at 90 degrees but not in the '3-D' sense of it.

if however you are talking of lightning being the rapid expansion of a superheated gas (which creates sound and light) then this expansion has by definintion got all three dimensions-increasing to boot

Answer 4

actually if u form a large circle of ppl and view lightning u would see it flat. Everybody sees it flat. So would u see a cylinder. From this observation you can only conclude that lightning is 3d but 2d relative to our position. Actually lightning is only a flash of light. so you can say whether light propagates in 2d or 3d.

Answer 5

Leading 3D Animation Software - http://3dAnimationCartoons.com/?JJes

Answer 6

It is 3d. Only the surface of something can be 2 D because all things must have depth.

Answer 7

Lightning is an EM wave and possesses a magnetic field perpendicular to an electric field which are both perpendicular to its direction of travel, hence it has 3 components all in different axis.
x-component - mag. field
y-component - electric field
z- component - direction of travel

Dr. H

Answer 8

Lightning is an electrostatics phenomenon in our physical world arising in flashes of light which is 3 dimensional and if time is included we have it as 4 dimensional.

Answer 9

Lightning is 3D - much like fire is 3D.

Even things that LOOK two dimensional, like a sheet of paper, actually have three dimensions, one dimension is just very small.

Plasma (not plasm) also has dimensions.

Answer 10

I would say its 3D but it really is not a physical thing you can touch (or so i think) so maybe its 2D