Tag: introduction to lightning

Benjamin Franklin, an American scientist, discovered that lightning and spark from your clothes during winters are same phenomena. Electric spark on large scale is known as lightning.

Lightning is a natural phenomenon, which occurs when two clouds strike with each other and produce huge amount of electricity.

Lightning is electrical discharge. The sparks caused in machines due to friction are out of local heating and not connected to electrical discharge.

Nitrogen is helpful, as all life is dependent on it. Protein in body is made up of nitrogen. To break nitrogen, huge amount of energy is required. This energy is only provided by natural lightning.

During huge rain, thunderstorm and strong wind, sparks are observed on an electric post.

The fact that lightning and spark are essentially the same phenomena, was discovered in 1752.

Electric spark is the electrical discharge that occurs when sufficiently high electric field creates an ionised channel.

There are only 3 types of lightning:

• Intra-cloud (IC)
  
• Cloud to Cloud (CC)
  
• Cloud to Ground (CG)
  

Electric sparks, small or large, are caused when electric poles are shaken by wind, amber is rubbed with fur and woollen, polyester clothes are taken off.

Due to accumulation of charges in cloud in large amount ,the air present near the cloud being non-conductive,no more resists the flow of charges and lightning takes place.