Thursday, August 7

Lightning in super slow motion

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5 comments:

The Two Peas said...

That is sooo cool. But I thought that lightning started from the ground.

August 11, 2008 4:36 PM
Luke said...

The bolt shoots up from the ground, but the static electricity is generated in the clouds. The first 3 seconds is when the cloud sends down "tracers", as soon as one makes solid contact with the ground a charge fires up from the ground to the cloud.

At least, I think that's what we're seeing. I'm no lightning expert.

August 12, 2008 1:42 PM
Traever Guingrich said...

i think your blog is in super slow mo

August 14, 2008 7:47 AM
Luke said...

I think you're right. I'll try to find something "blog-worthy" today. :-)

August 14, 2008 8:10 AM
Anonymous said...

Actually there is a large amount of charge moving across the ground that is racing up tall structures in its path to determine if it has the potential to jump to the clouds that carry an opposite charge. The charge moves forward on the ground essentially in the "shadow" of the moving cloud above. The clouds are sending down tracers and once the required potential is there to transverse the distance between earth and cloud the charge will jump to the clouds and there well be a flow of energy back and forth between earth and sky until the potential of both bodies are equalized. The notable exception to this is a particularly strong form of lightning that occurs over places like the Sea of Japan where the initial strike is actually from the clouds to the ground (in this case--sea). This is a much more violent event than the normal everyday lightning strike and only occurs in small percentage of the all lighnting strikes. However, it should be noted that all the mechanism of lightning strikes are not completely understood so further research continues in this venue....

September 02, 2008 11:54 AM

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