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| Source:Brittanica (Credit: Balazs Kovacs Images - FotoliaCopyright: Balazs Kovacs Images - Fotolia Information extracted from IPTC Photo Metadata) |
1. A giant discharge of electricity with flash of light and a loud crack of thunder.
2. Around the world, there are over 3,000,000 flashes every day i.e. around 44 strikes every second.
3. The spark can reach over eight kilometers in length and happens in under 2 microseconds (0.000002 seconds),raise the temperature of the air by 27,700 °C (more than 5 times the temperature of the sun), and contain a hundred million electrical volts.
4. The diameter of a lightning strike is actually pretty small. It just looks much larger because of how bright it is.
5. Thunder is heard after the lightning as light travels much faster than the speed of sound. The warmer the air, the faster the sound of thunder travels, and the colder the air, the slower the sound of thunder travels.
6. Key development of lightning: Ice particles collide as they swirl around in a storm, causing a separation of electrical charges. Positively charged ice crystals rise to the top of the thunderstorm, and negatively charged ice particles and hailstones drop to the lower parts of the storm.
7. Moving thunderstorm gathers positively charged particles along the ground that travel with the storm. As the differences in charges continue to increase, positively charged particles rise up tall objects such as trees, houses, and telephone poles and people.
8. Electricity in lightning travels from the ground up, not from the cloud to the ground.
9. Deducing the distance of the storm: Count the time difference between the lightning and the thunder i.e. 5 seconds = 1 mile, 15 seconds = 3 miles, 0 seconds = very close.
10. Lightning has been seen in volcanic eruptions, extremely intense forest fires, surface nuclear detonations, heavy snowstorms, and in large hurricanes.
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