Thunder and lightening?

Question

i live in oregon, and we had a pretty awesome thunderstorm last night, and i was just curious. What causes lightening? What causes thunder?

what does it mean when people say water 'conducts' electricity?

Answer 1

Lightning arises from the transport of electrons from one part of a cloud to another, caused by moving water droplets.  A charge is induced on a droplet, which may rise or fall (depending on the air currents) and the induced charge is transported to another part of the cloud.  The same mechanism works in a laboratory gadget called a van de Graaff generator; look this up for details.

A spark makes a pop when it jumps.  Lightning is a really big spark, and makes a really big pop; you hear it as thunder.  The noise lasts for a while because it comes from different parts of the spark (at different distances), and also bounces off things on the way.

Water conducts electricity, but not very well -- unless there are dissolved salts in it, which can make it conduct moderately well.  See this by dunking wires from a DC voltage source (anything from about 5 to 12 volts will do), and note what happens -- which won't be much of anything.  Now add some salt to the water, and you'll see a stream of small bubbles coming off of one of the wires, representing a chemical change arising from the current flow.

Answer 2

Lightning is caused by air currents rubbing against each other in violent storms. Within storms, currents of warm air and cold air run against each other, heading different directions (causing, among other things, high winds and condensation of water in warm air to form dark clouds and rain). As the air currents move past each other, electrons are stripped from some of the air molecules; eventually these electric charges build up and need to be discharged, so lightning is what happens when the electrical charge builds up enough and discharges into the ground. It's just like a gigantic version of the static shock you get after rubbing your socks on the carpet and then touching a doorknob. Except in this case, the air currents are the socks and carpet, and the ground is the doorknob.

Thunder is caused by the rapid expansion of air when it's heated by lightning. The massive lightning bolts are extremely hot--as hot as the surface of the sun! So the air around the bolt gets hot and expands super-quickly, producing a pressure wave that we hear as sound. It takes longer to reach our ears than the lightning does to reach our eyes because sound travels more slowly than light.

And finally, water itself doesn't actually conduct electricity! But it does dissolve ions, which do conduct electricity. Ions are charged atoms or molecules; since they have a positive or negative electrical charge, electrons are attracted to them, and can jump from ion to ion. This means that water, which in the real world is never perfectly free of dissolved ions, ends up conducting electricity as the electrons are passed around between the ions.

Hope this helps. :)

Answer 3

i have no idea... google it..

but thunder is kewl