How does lightning occur scientifically

Thunder and lightning occur at roughly the same time although you see the flash of lightning before you hear the thunder. This is because light travels much faster than sound. Lightning happens when the negative charges electrons in the bottom of the cloud are attracted to the positive charges protons in the ground. The accumulation of electric charges has to be great enough to overcome the insulating properties of air.

When this happens, a stream of negative charges pours down towards a high point where positive charges have clustered due to the pull of the thunderhead. The connection is made and the protons rush up to meet the electrons.

The final stage of development occurs as the top of the cloud becomes anvil-shaped. As a thunderstorm cloud grows, precipitation forms within the cloud. A well-developed thunderstorm cloud contains mostly small ice crystals in the upper levels of the cloud, a mixture of small ice crystals and small hail in the middle levels of the cloud, and a mixture of rain and melting hail in the lower levels of the cloud.

Air movements and collisions between the various types of precipitation in the middle of the cloud cause the precipitation particles to become charged. The lighter ice crystals become positively charged and are carried upward into the upper part of the storm by rising air.

The heavier hail becomes negatively charged and is either suspended by the rising air or falls toward the lower part of the storm. These collisions and air movements cause the top of the thunderstorm cloud to become positively charged and the middle and lower part of the storm to become negatively charged.

In addition, a small positive charge develops near the bottom of the thunderstorm cloud. The negative charge in the middle of thunderstorm cloud causes the ground underneath to become positively charged, and the positively charged anvil causes the ground under the anvil to become negatively charged.

Lightning is a giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere or between the atmosphere and the ground. The frequent crackles heard when tuned into an AM radio station during a thunderstorm are sferics from the lightning discharges. These sferics are registered at the 60 WWLLN receiving stations around the world and provide a near real-time information dataset. High above thunderstorm clouds at altitudes between 50—90 km, large-scale electrical discharges can occur.

These are triggered by thundercloud-to-ground lightning activity. They appear as fleeting, luminous, red-orange flashes and take on a variety of shapes. The tale of the year hunt for red sprites is a story of how science works. It is a story illustrating that science, rather than knowing all there is to know, stands barely on the threshold of many more discoveries about our complex and fascinating universe.

They were given little more credence than UFO sightings until , when university researchers accidentally captured a red sprite on a low-light video camera. In the region between a thundercloud and the ground, a very strong electric field can be set up.

There is a huge potential difference voltage established between the negative base of the cloud and the positive ground. When this potential difference reaches a certain value, sharp-pointed ground-based objects are seen to glow, often with a hissing sound. Saint Elmo is the patron saint of sailors, and in the past, sailors regarded such an event as an omen of bad luck and stormy weather.

It appears like fire in some circumstances coming from sharply pointed objects such as masts, spires, lightning rods and even on aircraft wings. Explore the basics of static electricity and electrical charge and electrons, insulators and conductors. Help your students understand more about lightening with the Viewing and monitoring lightning activity. You just touched a metal doorknob after shuffling your rubber-soled feet across the carpet. You've been struck by lightning! Well, not really, but it's the same idea.

Your rubber-soled shoes picked up stray electrons from the carpet. Those electrons built up on your shoes giving them a static charge. Static means not moving. Static charges are always "looking" for the first opportunity to "escape," or discharge. Your contact with a metal doorknob—or car handle or anything that conducts electricity—presents that opportunity and the excess electrons jump at the chance.

So, do thunderclouds have rubber shoes? Not exactly, but there is a lot of shuffling going on inside the cloud.