Why, when hit by lightening, do trees EXPLODE! and yet many people have not been seriously injured/killed ?

Question

Can't figure out, how lightening operates i.e from ground to sky as people say or from the sky to the earth - as it looks.

I am aware that people have electric inside their bodies, which may help them tolerate such strikes, do tree's have none?, at all?
I'm stumped over this one.
Thanks

Answer 1

lightning is from sky to earth, google it

=o trees explode when hit by lightning?


i must see this =D

Answer 2

TREES ARE TALLER AND GET THE MAIN STRIKE. PEOPLE YOU HEAR ABOUT WHO LIVE AFTER GETTING HIT BY LIGHTNING, WERE ONLY HIT BY A SMALLER OFF-SHHOT FROM THE MAIN STRIKE. (oops)

Now if you were riding on a tractor plowing a large field with no trees or buildings in sight, you personally would then be the tallest thing. You would receive the main strike. You would die. Yes, this is what happens out in open farmland.
Where there are trees and buildings, those things take most or all of the strike. But sometimes, even the tree is not enough. A few years ago right here in NYC two people were killed while standing under a large tree in the middle of a field in a park. The lightning strike was so robust that side tendrils of electric current coming off the main strike were strong enough to kill the people, even though most of the lightning still went through the tree and split the tree, and it was a huge tree.

As for your struggle to improve your understanding of lightning let me say that you should not worry yet about which way it may be traveling. Also put aside for now your struggles to understand the relative conductivity of people and trees. For this purpose of discerning danger it is irrelevant. First grasp that all lightning strikes are not of the same power. No, not by a long shot. Then grasp that they may oft branch off quite a bit near their end points. Then always be focusing on this consideration: what thing, be it tree, person, light pole, etc. is highest; closest to the cloud
with the opposite charge. And is the person near to that thing, or is he that thing.

But I like that you want to become smarter and understand things. That is why I answered this question. Keep going.

I am proud of you. Davie Monster.

Answer 3

Not all lightning bolts are the same.
A high amperage bolt, passing through a tree
might generate enough steam to split it.
It doesn't happen all that often.
Mostly the tree will show a surface scar.

Lightning is a complex static discharge.
Research has found it goes both ways.
A low amperage 'leader` from above is typically
followed by a higher amperage 'return stroke`
from below back along the ionized path
established by the leader.

People do not have "electric inside their bodies".
They have nervous systems, but the net charge is neutral.
In fact a person has a lot less chance of surviving
a lightning strike than a tree.
Trees have no nervous system to be disrupted
by the discharge.

Answer 4

When the lightning hits the tree, the moisture in the tree flashes into steam, which can either split the tree or sometimes blow it apart. People have been hurt, but it's rare.

Lightning occurs when their is an imbalance in the charges between earth and sky. Often the lightning travels in both directions and meets in the middle, but it varies.

All living things have electric fields. Some of the damage from being hit by lightning comes from the scrambling of the nervous system's electrical processes.

Answer 5

Animal tissue is flexible, plant tissue (especially trees, which are full of lignin) is not. So, when hit by a beam of hot plasma (which is pretty much what lightning is), the animal tissue can expand a little bit without coming apart, and the plant tissue can't.