How is thunder n lightning made??

Question

How is thunder n lightning made??

Answer 1

In an electrical storm, the storm clouds are charged like giant capacitors in the sky. The upper portion of the cloud is positive and the lower portion is negative.

In the process of the water cycle, moisture can accumulate in the atmosphere. This accumulation is what we see as a cloud. Interestingly, clouds can contain millions upon millions of water droplets and ice suspended in the air. As the process of evaporation and condensation continues, these droplets collide other moisture that is in the process of condensing as it rises. Also, the rising moisture may collide with ice or sleet that is in the process of falling to the earth or located in the lower portion of the cloud. The importance of these collisions is that electrons are knocked off of the rising moisture, thus creating a charge separation.

The newly knocked-off electrons gather at the lower portion of the cloud, giving it a negative charge. The rising moisture that has just lost an electron carries a positive charge to the top of the cloud. Beyond the collisions, freezing plays an important role. As the rising moisture encounters colder temperatures in the upper cloud regions and begins to freeze, the frozen portion becomes negatively charged and the unfrozen droplets become positively charged. At this point, rising air currents have the ability to remove the positively charged droplets from the ice and carry them to the top of the cloud. The remaining frozen portion would likely fall to the lower portion of the cloud or continue on to the ground. Combining the collisions with the freezing, we can begin to understand how a cloud may acquire the extreme charge separation that is required for a lightning strike.

When there is a charge separation in a cloud, there is also an electric field that is associated with the separation. Like the cloud, this field is negative in the lower region and positive in the upper region.

The strength or intensity of the electric field is directly related to the amount of charge buildup in the cloud. As the collisions and freezing continue to occur and the charges at the top and bottom of the cloud increase, the electric field becomes more and more intense -- so intense, in fact, that the electrons at the earth's surface are repelled deeper into the earth by the strong negative charge at the lower portion of the cloud. This repulsion of electrons causes the earth's surface to acquire a strong positive charge.

All that is needed now is a conductive path for the negative cloud bottom to contact the positive earth surface. The strong electric field, being somewhat self-sufficient, creates this path.

Answer 2

Lightning is an atmospheric electrical discharge, while thunder is the sound of instantaneous vaporization of air and water caused by the heat of the discharge.

Answer 3

This is easy...My Momma Told Me...the thunder is GOD playing the bowling alley, and the lightning is when he makes a strike!!

oh, p.s. when it rains, he's crying..because he missed!

Answer 4

Thunderstorms are caused when there is significant heating at the surface to make the air rise.  There are several stages of these storms.   They start out as fair weather cumulous, but with heating get taller and are know as towering cumulous (usually pre-thunderstorm at this point  and then become Cumulonimbus clouds or what we know as thunderstorms.

There are two varieties, with or without the Anvil top.   Low cloud 3 do not have the anvil appearance and usually are in the developmental stage.

With the anvil,  the storm has reached or is reaching full strength and is considered a mature of even dissipating storm.  This is called Low Cloud 9.

There are positive and electrical charges associated with these storms and ionization.   These processes help account for the lightning that you see..

Answer 5

Lightning is a discharge of static electricity. When u heart the thunder it is because the lightning heats the air up till it appears to explode. The heat of lightning ravels the heat of the sun. If u hear the thunder it missed u that time.

Answer 6

Thunder storms occur when the low and high pressure air mix.

The electrical charge would be high

Answer 7

The simplest answer is that there is static voltage in every thing and electrons can move freely in outer space. So heat or rain bridge the gap and you have lightning.

Experiment:  Take a voltage tester on AC setting, ground one lead and place a sheet of aluminum in the other. Try it in different places and see.