if anyone know the answer, pls tell me . 10 points waiting for you!!
2007-05-26 22:03:33 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Weather
Lightning is an electrical discharge in the atmosphere. It's about 3 miles long, and 54,000 degrees fahrenheit.
There are different kinds of lightning strikes. It can happen cloud to ground, within clouds, and cloud to cloud. A majority of strikes happen cloud to cloud (about 80%).
Lightning begins when an electrical field in a local area of the cloud reaches about 3 million volts per meter. Electrons surge towards the cloud base and the ground in a series of steps called a step leader.
The charge is following the path of least resistance, and this leads to the forked appearance.
As the charge reaches the ground, a positive charge from the ground surges upwards, connecting to the downward surge creating the flash we see and know as a lightning bolt.
The thunder we hear, usually after the bolt of lightning, is created by the rapid heating of the air around the bolt. The air expands and contracts violently, creating the crack and rumble sounds know as thunder.
2007-05-27 03:23:44 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 13⤊ 2⤋
This is a lengthy answer, but it should cover what you want to know-
There are a few different theories why (which I won't go into), but in a thunderstorm positive charges gather at the top and negative gather at the bottom.
Since opposite charges attract, the negative charges in the bottom of a cloud 'pull' positive charges to the surface of Earth creating a positively charged surface (as well as buildings, trees, people etc) as the storm moves along. Air is a poor conductor so the charges can't meet right away, they are still stick at the cloud base and the Earth's surface.
Negative charges in the cloud jump from air molecules 50-100 meters at a time towards the ground, creating 'stepped leaders'. Eventually the 'leader' negative charges reach the ground creating a path for all of the negative charges to rush from the cloud to the ground. (If you can picture someone blazing a trail through the brush of the forest, and then allowing the rest of the group to easily follow, this is a similar effect) This allows an electric current to rush from the ground to the cloud, which is what we see as lightning.
Lightning heats the air surrounding it to a temperature exceeding 50,000 degrees F so quickly, that the air surrounding the 'channel' that the lightning strike followed has a very high pressure. That air expands into the air around it, then collapses, creating a shock wave which turns into a sound wave which is what we hear as thunder.
Thunder has the sound of a "crack", but as you are standing farther away from the lightning strike, the different densities of air cause the sound wave to bend, and thunder sounds more like a rumble. And thunder occurs at the same time as lightning, but sound travels slower than light so we hear thunder after lightning, a bigger time difference between the two the further you are from the lightning strike.
I've answered this kind of question before, so I copied my own answer over for you. I hope this helps.
2007-05-27 02:21:21 · answer #2 · answered by Bean 3 · 2⤊ 3⤋
It's a bit too long to type in here, click the link below and it explains everything. Lightning is not only cloud to cloud but earth to sky. Lightning does not always come out of the sky, often it comes out of the ground too.
2007-05-26 23:58:59 · answer #3 · answered by crknapp79 5 · 1⤊ 1⤋
lightning is a form of energy which is formed by the collision of cloud this happens b'coz the 1 cloud has +ve charge & other has -ve charge so when both of them collide they form a large amount of energy & dis energy is called lightning
2007-05-26 22:20:59 · answer #4 · answered by cool 2 · 0⤊ 5⤋