• Question: What causes lightning?

    Asked by justme to Ash, Andrew, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by santy.
    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Oh good question!!!

      Lightning is an atmospheric electrical discharge, or spark. Have you ever walked with your socks across carpet and then went to touch a friend or a metal object? Static electricity was built up as you rubbed your socks on the carpet, and then the charge wanted to balance itself out, so it leaped from your finger to the object you touched, producing a spark and maybe even a small shock to your finger! Try to lay in bed at night and jostle around a cotton or fleece blanket… you can sometimes see flickers of light as little sparks are produced!

      Well lightning is the sky’s form of static electricity and sparks.

      Lightning is created when liquid and ice particles above the freezing level collide, and build up large electrical fields in the clouds. So when you have lots of clouds and particles flying around in a thunderstorm, lightning is formed for readily! When a charge is built up inside a cloud, it wants to go somewhere. The charge can make a spark into another cloud, for cloud-to-cloud lightning, or from cloud to ground! “The temperature inside a lightning bolt can reach 50,000 degrees F, hotter than the surface of the sun”!!!!!!

      http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_causes_lightning.htm

    • Photo: Andrew Thomas

      Andrew Thomas answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      I can’t add much to what Paige has said except that I remember seeing something which showed when you get a ground to air strike the lightning doesn’t come all the way to the ground because when it gets so far down the electric field is so huge, new lightning comes out of the ground to meet that coming down from the sky.

      If you ever walk past a pylon and you hear that buzzing crackling noise, that is actually the electricity in the wires jumping through the air to the pylon, which is made of metal. The voltage isn’t as high as in a lightning bolt but it is essentially tiny lightning, just like the sparks in your synthetic clothing that Paige mentioned.

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      There was loads of lightning at mine last night!! MASSIVE bolts!!

      Have you ever heard of ball lightning before – it’s a complete phenomenon…

      http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2006/feb/09/great-balls-of-lightning

      Ball lightning is thought to occur when a lightning strike forms a sphere of super hot plasma which holds together as a bright ball before dissipating!

      You can google for videos, but I couldn’t find a really good one to post quickly! Have a look!

    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 1 Jul 2012:

      I can’t really add anything to that, but a fascinating addition by Andrew. I love watching lightening, when I’m home at night. Good lightening is much better than a firework show.

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