Can someone please explain how lightning is formed quite simply and quickly but still with depth?

Question

Can someone please explain how lightning is formed quite simply and quickly but still with depth?

Answer 1

Lightning is formed when there is an electric discharge (release of electric charges) between two charged clouds or between a charged cloud and the earth. These electric charges in the clouds are formed when ice or water molecules in clouds collide and rub against each other.The electric discharge is accompanied by the emission of light, which we see as lightning.

Answer 2

I have just read Wikipedia a few days ago about this and it says it is currently UNKNOWN how the potential builds up that causes lightning.

Answer 3

Lightning is a flow of electrons. When clouds crash, atoms are excited and loose electrons, the Earth is an infinite electron source, so for the balance on those atoms to be back, electrons raise from the ground, the light is from the photons (electrons "moving" into atoms)

Actually its more complex, but this should be a fairly simple answer.

Answer 4

Sure.  Right after you teach me how to do brain surgery in 5 minutes.

OK  simple answer (and I'll try to use words with few syllables for you):

Simplest answer: We don't know.

2nd simplest: moving water drops [ maybe ice crystals actually] (like rubbing your feet on a rug) causes separation of charge.  Charge builds up until the break down voltage is reached.  Then zap crack.

Problems with that: is why are such large charges able to build up?  And what really causes the start of the first stroke?

Ions from outer space (solar wind) are also theorized to contribute. { I told you we don't know}

Answer 5

All has to do with positive and negative charges meeting each other in the air causing a bolt of electricity. I may be wrong on this but i think the positive charges start on a object lets say phone pole those charges go up into the atmosphere to meet with the negative charges once those meet boom you got lightning.

Answer 6

wind cause frition passing heavier water droplets in rain clouds causeing a build up of positive atom

which build up till the charge can't hold the breaks out to any negitive atoms  eg Tree top the ground  

something ,like that any way

Answer 7

Storm clouds have lots of tiny particles in them, and these are called hydrometeors. These are tiny particles of ice crystals. In the same way as if you rub a balloon on your head and it can stick to the wall because of static electricity, when hydrometeors bounce together, they rub charge on and off each other. This makes charge get carried up and down within the cloud. This creates a difference in charge across the cloud, creating an electrical field. The result of this is that the Earth has a different electrical charge to the cloud. When the charge difference becomes big enough, eventually the insulation of the air breaks down and you get a lightning strike. A lightning bolt carries between a billion and 10 billion joules of energy, which is enough energy to make 100 000 pieces of toast! The lightning bolt is sufficient to heat the air around it to about 30 000 degrees centigrade - that's about six times the surface temperature of the sun. When you make something that hot, the gas molecules get so excited that you literally rip them to pieces. The electrons in the gas molecules jump to a very high energy level and then jump back again to a normal energy level. When they do that, they give out light. The light that they spray out is what you see as a flash of lightning. The sudden extreme heating of the air causes a compression wave, like clapping your hands together, around the lightning bolt, and that's what slowly propagates to you as a roll of thunder. As light travels much faster than sound waves, that's why you see the lightning first and then you hear the thunder.

Answer 8

When rain falls from a thundercloud, the individual droplets rub together and build up a charge in the cloud (similar to how when you rub a balloon in your hair, it builds up static electricity).  This is on a much larger and dangerous scale because of the number of rain drops involved.  Once a big enough charge is built up in the cloud, the energy is discharged in the form of lightning into the ground (which is neutral) or another cloud (neutral or oppositely charged).

Answer 9

when the moisture from the clouds hit each other it causes static electricity.

Answer 10

Before lightning is formed, the cumulonimbus cloud of thunderstorms must become electrically charged. In most rain clouds, the bottom of the cloud is negatively charged and the top is positively charged. It is not known how the cloud becomes charged, but scientists have formed numerous theories to try to explain this phenomenon. These theories have been divided into two main categories: those that require ice and those that do not. However, meteorologists are leaning toward the theory that requires ice because lightning is not often seen unless ice has formed in the upper layers of the rain cloud.

Theories

The first theory describes how ice gains a negative charge while frozen and unfrozen water keeps its positive charge. Another theory shows how when large droplets fall swiftly, they gain a negative charge, while slowly falling water gains a positive charge.

Theories that do not require ice gives the explanation that the cloud gets its charge by attracting negative charges from the ionosphere. These negative charges are pushed to the base of the cloud by strong downdrafts, while the positive particles are pushed upwards by warm air within the rain cloud.

Strokes

Eventually the negative charge of the base of the cloud gives the earth a positive charge. When the electrical potential reaches approximately ten thousand volts per centimeter, ionization occurs along a narrow path and the result is a flash of lightning. The negative particles descend from the base of the cloud to the ground.

However, most lightning flashes are not a single event, but rather numerous strokes followed by a leader stroke. There can be up to 42 strokes to a lightning bolt. The time between successive strokes is 0.02 seconds. The average bolt lasts only one fourth of a second.

http://library.thinkquest.org/16132/html...

http://www.statesman.com/weather/content...

Lightning is basically just the result of static electricity.

You can build up a static charge on your body, say, by shuffling

your feet across the floor.  This causes electrons an excess of

electrons to build up on your body (or maybe they leave and go

to the floor?  it's all the same in the end), which than then

create a spark if you get close to something.  Lightning is similar.

Thunderstorms build up because of something called "convection".

You probably know that hot air rises and cool air falls.  When

the sun heats the air near the ground, it tends to rise, but the

higher it goes the more it cools off, which eventually causes it

to fall back down again.  This circulation is called convection.

If the air carries with it moisture, you form thunderclouds.

The exact mechanism of how and why lightning occurs isn't really

well understood.  Here's one theory: as the convection process goes

on, warmer water droplets going up bump into cold ice crystals going

down.  Just like rubbing your feet on the floor builds up a static

charge on your body, so do these collisions between the water drops

and ice crystals build up a static charge in the cloud, which eventually

makes a spark - just a really big one.  But this is only one theory.

The mechanism behind the spark itself is better understood, and is

something called "dielectric breakdown".  Basically a dielectric

material is one that is also a good electric insulator, i.e., electrical

current flows very poorly through it.  The example you may be familiar

with is rubber.  Air is also a good insulator.  With an insulator,

you can build up a very large static charge on one side of the insulator,

and it will not flow through to the otherside UNLESS something

catastrophic happens.  This is dielectric breakdown, where basically

the stresses on the atoms from the electric field of the static charge

become large enough to pull electrons off the atoms - this then allows

electrical current to flow, and so the static charge blasts through.

So when enough charge builds up in a thundercloud, the air undergoes

dielectric breakdown, allowing the electricity to flow to the ground,

or perhaps another cloud.

The speed of lightning is simply the speed at which this breakdown

takes place - about 1/3 of the speed of light.  Lightning bolts are

crooked because air itself is irregular, especially in a storm where

winds cause turbulence, etc.  Even at the molecular level, the air

molecules aren't all lined up, but in random positions relative to

one another.  So there's no reason to think the dielectric breakdown

will occur is a straight line.  The color occurs because the

air through which the lightning passes is heated to a very high

temperature.  Just like an electric stove glows red when you push

electricity through the burner, the air glows when you push electricity

through it.  However, the lightning has a tremedous amount of energy,

and heats the air to much higher temperatures than a stove (tens of

thousands of degrees).  Higher temperature means it glows with a

"hotter" color of the rainbow, in this case purple-white instead of red.

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/dec...

Answer 11

Lightning is known to occur when a specific region of the atmosphere  develops a sufficiently large enough electric charge to cause the electric fields associated with that charge to initiate the electrical breakdown of the air.  

While lightning is commonly produced in the towering clouds known as cumulonimbus, they can also be produced in snow storms, dust storms, and in clouds over erupting volcanoes as well as from nuclear detonations at sea level.  Lightning can also occur in clean air, which gave the expression "bolt from the blue".

I hope this helps.

Answer 12

lightning is formed when there are charged ions in the air that are negative or positive. they are attracted to the ground witch is charged oppositely. insights attract.

Answer 13

it's raining pretty hard here I think god turned the sprinklers on too high

Answer 14

Lightning is produced in thunderstorms when liquid and ice particles above the freezing level collide and build up large electrical fields in the clouds. Once these electric fields become large enough, a giant "spark" occurs between them, like static electricity, reducing the charge separation. The lightning spark can occur between clouds, between the cloud and air, or between the cloud and ground. The temperature inside a lightning bolt can reach 50,000 degrees F, hotter than the surface of the sun. The current produced by a lightning bolt can be in the order of 80,000 amps.

Answer 15

Lightning is formed when air particles are ripped apart.  It causes an immediate flash (lightning), then you hear the rip a few second later (thunder).