Lightning Essay

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Various religions and cultures throughout history venerated lightning as a symbol of power, yet the physics of this phenomenon remained an enigma until recent centuries. The hunt to understand began with Benjamin Franklin’s determination of lightning as a form of electricity in 1752, when he proved his hypothesis by flying a kite during a thunderstorm. Yes, Benjamin was right in proving that lightening was electricity, but the question is how is that electricity turned into lightning or how is it generated? There are three parts that play a big role in the creation of lightning; the first big one being the water cycle, the second one is the buildup of static electricity that occurs in a cloud and last is how the lightening is discharged. The formation of clouds play an extremely important part in the creation of lightning, but first one needs to understand how clouds are formed before understanding how lightning works. The water cycle has two main stages that are essential to the creation of clouds; the first one is condensation and the second one is evaporation. Firstly, evaporation occurs when water heats up and turns to vapor. The source of the heat is usually the sun. Water turns to vapor because when water heats up its molecules start moving rapidly. Due to the heat, water vapor will rise from the ground and as the vapor gets higher in the atmosphere it starts to cool down and condenses; the higher up in the atmosphere the cooler the temperature. The vapor condenses because it undergoes a process called condensation which is when water goes from a gas or vapor back into a liquid. The vapor turns into droplets of water high in the atmosphere and form clouds. The more condensed water the heavier and bigger the cloud will ... ... middle of paper ... ... one would have to understand the components of atoms, the water cycle and how opposite electrical charges attract. Evaporation and condensation are what form the cloud and the constantly evaporation and condensation within the cloud that causes electrons to fall on the bottom of the cloud creating separation of charges. Once they cloud builds enough charges it starts to effect earth’s surface by pushing the entire negative charge back and leaving the surface with a positive charge. The strong electrical field forms a bridge from the cloud to the surface of earth by ionizing the air called step leaders. Once the upward streamers that are on earth’s surface connect with a step leader, a current is released and a flash of lightning is discharged. Following the flash of lightning a loud roar of sound that’s caused by air spreading rapidly due to heat is called thunder.

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