weight of lightning.?

Question

How much does an average lighting bolt weigh?

Answer 1

*Did I screw that up? Sorry. I was confused. Maybe I should ask more questions and answer less!

E = Mc^2.
M = E/c^2.
So the mass of energy can be represented. Apologies to all.

Answer 2

I don't think that lightning can be weighed, like as in pounds or kilos.

Lightning is an atmospheric discharge of electricity. It is literally sub atomic particles of an atom discharging from a cloud to (for example) the ground. Since even whole atoms weigh close to nothing and can hardly ever be seen, subatomic particles must weigh little to nothing.

An average bolt of negative lightning carries an electric current of 40 kA (kiloamperes), although some bolts can be up to 120 kA, and transfers a charge of 5 coulombs and 500 MJ (megajoules), or enough energy to power a 100 watt lightbulb for just under two months. The voltage depends on the length of the bolt: with the dielectric breakdown of air being 3 million volts per meter, this works out at about one billion volts for a 300m (1,000 feet) lightning bolt.

Answer 3

The only way to come up with an answer is to find an amps and seconds and convert this to electrons and multiply by the weight of an electron. Not very much since electrons are so light.
This site
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/lightning2.html
says
"Williams says that a typical lightning bolt may transfer 10^20 electrons in a fraction of a second, developing a peak current of up to 10 kiloamperes. "
an electron has a mass electron mass = 9.10938188 × 10^-31 kilograms (Google calculator)
so a lightning bolt has a mass of about 9x10^-11 kilograms
or 9x10^-5 milligrams (0.00009 milligrams) where a drop of water has a mass of about 25 milligrams.
www.public.asu.edu/~rudenun/chm113/lab1/report.doc
[ and having just read the first answer, the whole point of Einstein's theories is that Energy DOES have mass - not only does E=MC^2 tell us how much energy can be gotten from mass, it tells us how much mass energy has M=E/(C^2) .]

Answer 4

I'm not really sure you understand the basics behind lightning bolts. When lightning strikes, it basically is a giant electric path between the clouds and the ground. This means electrons will be flowing between the ground and the clouds, or vice versa, but it doesn't *really* have a weight.

Now, you can figure out the weight per second, because lightning bolts do have a current, which is basically a description of how many electrons flow per second. Lightning has a current ranging from about 3000 Amperes to 200,000 Amps, which means in one second, 3000 coulombs of electricity flow through it.

A coulomb is the charge of 6.24 x 10^18 electrons, and electrons do have weight. So basically a lightning bolt transfers 1.71 x 10^-8 kg of mass in one second. This is about 3.75 x 10^-8 lb, or about one - 26 millionth of a pound transfered in one second.

Answer 5

zero.