What is thunder and lightning?

Question

what causes them?

Answer 1

**** IN THE AIR. WIKIPEDIA IT. IT'LL TELL YOU ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING.

Answer 2

Thunder is the sound of lightning

Lightning is the electrical bolt or plasma light beam

cause: 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

Answer 3

google it

Answer 4

Lightning is an electrical discharge, either cloud to cloud or between earth and cloud; caused by static electricity built up by movement within the cloud

Thunder is the resultant sound of a 'collapse' of the channel through which the lightning stroke occurred. The collapse is due to the giant electric spark's having superheated the air within its path. When the spark was no longer present to hold the surrounding atmosphere in place, the 'edges' of the air mass slammed together creating the large booming sound.

Answer 5

lightning is eletricated particles in the air in which the lightning heats up the air around the lightning so fast it creates a sound wave called thunder

Answer 6

To put it simply, lightning is electricity.  It forms in the strong up-and-down air currents inside tall dark cumulonimbus clouds as water droplets, hail, and ice crystals collide with one another.  Scientists believe that these collisions build up charges of electricity in a cloud.  The positive and negative electrical charges in the cloud separate from one another, the negative charges dropping to the lower part of the cloud and the positive charges staying ins the middle and upper parts. Positive electrical charges also build upon the ground below.  When the difference in the charges becomes large enough, a flow of electricity moves from the cloud down to the ground or from one part of the cloud to another, or from one cloud to another cloud.  In typical lightning these are down-flowing negative charges, and when the positive charges on the ground leap upward to meet them, the jagged downward path of the negative charges suddenly lights up with a brilliant flash of light. Because of this, our eyes fool us into thinking that the lightning bolt shoots down from the cloud, when in fact the lightning travels up from the ground. In some cases, positive charges come to the ground from severe thunderstorms or from the anvil at the very top of a thunderstorm cloud.  The whole process takes less than a millionth of a second.  

Kinds of Lightning

There are words to describe different kinds of lightning.  Here are some of them:

In-Cloud Lightning: The most common type, it travels between positive and negative charge centers within the thunderstorm.

Cloud-to-Ground Lightning: This is lightning that reaches from a thunderstorm cloud to the ground.

Cloud-to-Cloud Lightning: A rare event, it is lightning that travels from one cloud to another.

Sheet Lightning: This is lightning within a cloud that lights up the cloud like a sheet of light.

Ribbon Lightning: This is when a cloud-to-ground flash is blown sideways by the wind, making it appear as two identical bolts side by side.

Bead Lightning: Also called "chain lightning," this is when the lightning bolt appears to be broken into fragments because of varying brightness or because parts of the bolt are covered by clouds.

Ball Lightning: Rarely seen, this is lightning in the form of a grapefruit-sized ball, which lasts only a few seconds.

Bolt from the blue: A lightning bolt from a distant thunderstorm, seeming to come out of the clear blue sky, but really from the top or edge of a thunderstorm a few miles away.

Lightning bolts are extremely hot, with temperatures of 30,000 to 50,000 degrees F.  That's hotter than the surface of the sun! When the bolt suddenly heats the air around it to such an extreme, the air instantly expands, sending out a vibration or shock wave we hear as an explosion of sound. This is thunder.  If you are near the stroke of lightning you’ll hear thunder as one sharp crack. When lightning is far away, thunder sounds more like a low rumble as the sound waves reflect and echo off hillsides, buildings and trees.  Depending on wind direction and temperature, you may hear thunder for up to fifteen or twenty miles.

Lightning causes thunder because a strike of lightning is incredibly hot. A typical bolt of lightning can immediately heat the air to between 15,000 to 60,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hotter than the surface of the sun!

A lightning strike can heat the air in a fraction of a second. When air is heated that quickly, it expands violently and then contracts, like an explosion that happens in the blink of an eye. It's that explosion of air that creates sound waves, which we hear and call thunder.

When lightning strikes very close by, we hear the thunder as a loud and short bang. We hear thunder from far away as a long, low rumble.

Lightning always produces thunder. When you see lightning but don't hear any thunder, the lightning is too far away from you for the sound waves to reach you.

Light and sound will always move at different speeds. And lightning will always produce thunder because of a strike's high temperature. So no matter what, you will always see a flash of lightning before you hear thunder.

Answer 7

Lightning = The flash

Thunder = The sound

The cause is instability in the atmosphere.

For example, the collision of warm and cool air will cause thunderstorms.

Answer 8

A lightning discharge is a large scale example of an electric spark.When the difference in electrical charge within a cloud or between the bottom of the cloud and the earth's surface is large enough,electricity is discharged in the form of lightning.These separation of electrical charges within a cloud are caused by the strong updraft and down draft which are in turn caused when the warm, moisture-laden air rises rapidly causing the thundercloud (cumulonimbus)to expand upwards.

Heat from a lightning flash which can reach 22000 degree celcius causes the surrounding air molecules to expand rapidly producing the sound waves we hear as thunder.So,in other words,the thunder is the noise of the lightning discharge.

Answer 9

Thunder is the sound that lightning makes.  Lightning is a huge discharge of electricity

Answer 10

Friction between clouds