How thunder and lightning are formed. How and why lightning occurs. Formation of thunderclouds
Have you ever wondered why birds sit on high-voltage wires, and a person dies when he touches the wires? Everything is very simple - they sit on a wire, but no current flows through the bird, but if the bird flaps its wing, simultaneously touching two phases, it will die. Usually large birds such as storks, eagles, and falcons die this way.
Likewise, a person can touch a phase and nothing will happen to him if no current flows through him; for this you need to wear rubberized boots and God forbid you touch a wall or metal.
Let's also look at why lightning strikes tall trees, buildings or other open areas. The higher the distance, the shorter the journey, the more negative the storms - the more positive and the more positive they will be. They rise to the highest high points, to get closer to your favorites - negative charges. Sometimes, more and more impatient positives will jump out of the pointed objects, thereby contributing to the creation of a fragment of the plasma channel. Negative and positive qualities have been used by people to create lightning rods for tall and sharp objects.
Electric current can kill a person in a split second; it strikes without warning. Lightning strikes the earth one hundred times per second and over eight million times per day. This force of nature is five times hotter than the surface of the sun. The electrical discharge strikes with a force of 300,000 amperes and a million volts in a split second. IN Everyday life we think we can control the electricity that powers our homes, our outdoor lights, and now our cars. But electricity in its original form cannot be controlled. And lightning is electricity on a huge scale. And yet lightning remains a big mystery. It can strike unexpectedly and its path can be unpredictable.
A lightning rod is nothing more than creating a path for loads so that they do not have to sleep and look for a passage on the surface of the earth. This is not a polite gesture to us for these negative and positive billions. In this way we protect ourselves from the unwanted creation of a plasma channel, for example, through the roof of our house. And since you already know that this channel is very hot, you can imagine what it is like.
They are very rare and have not yet been fully explored. Everything that has been described is only a fragment of a large field of knowledge that tries to explain a lot of interesting phenomena occurring in the earth's atmosphere, but this is a completely different story. Why do thunderstorms reach the Earth? Physics knows the answer to this gradation of questions. We explain the mechanism of atmospheric lightning.
Lightning in the sky does no harm, but one in ten lightning strikes the surface of the earth. Lightning is divided into many branches, each of which is capable of striking a person located at the epicenter. When a person is struck by lightning, the current can pass from one person to another if they come into contact.
There is a rule of thirty and thirty: if you see lightning and hear thunder less than thirty seconds later, you must seek shelter, and then you must wait thirty minutes from the last clap of thunder before going outside. But lightning does not always obey a strict order.
Before it strikes the first lightning and rises, an electric field is formed in the thunderclouds - masses of ice crystals, water vapor and air. Inside the cloud, they break away from the atoms and free electrons begin to move, which then ionize the neutral atoms in the gas particles, depositing electrons. These are the paths that lightning strikes, that is, the discharge of electric current. This is due to the fact that in gases, and therefore in air, the flow of current is based on the movement of ions.
We see the paths that will control electricity in the sky in the form of “lightning,” that is, a very bright electrical spark. Lightning travels either to the Earth, to another cloud, or within the same cloud. This depends on the course of the ionized channels in the air. When the spark looks for the most ionized roads, it stops on the road and “checks” the air along its path. This is a branch of lightning directed downward.
There is such an atmospheric phenomenon as thunder from a clear sky. Often lightning, leaving a cloud, travels up to sixteen kilometers before striking the ground. In other words, lightning can appear out of nowhere. Lightning needs wind and water. When strong winds lift moist air, the conditions are created for destructive thunderstorms to occur.
As much as 85 percent of the lightning that is generated in large thunderclouds does not strike Earth, but instead relieves electrical tension within the clouds. But the Earth is also in the throes of a lightning magnet because its surface is positively charged and charged ions accumulate at the base of clouds. Therefore, the discharge of the potential difference is also carried out by the flow of ions to the Earth.
The sound of thunder we hear during a storm does not mean that lightning has struck something. Thunderstorms are also accompanied by discharges within and between clouds. Thunder is the sound of the sound barrier crossing through air that is rapidly expanding as a result of sudden warming.
It is impossible to decompose into components something that fits into a millionth of a second. One false belief is that we see lightning as it travels to the ground, but what we actually see is the lightning's return path into the sky. Lightning is not a unidirectional strike to the ground, but is actually a ring, a path in two directions. The flash of lightning that we see is the so-called return stroke, the final phase of the cycle. And when the return stroke of lightning heats the air, it appears business card- thunder. The return path of lightning is the part of lightning that we see as a flash and hear as thunder. A reverse current of thousands of amperes and millions of volts rushes from the ground to the cloud.
How to calculate distance from a storm
An electric spark that passes through a channel of ionized air at a speed of tens of thousands of kilometers per second and heats it up to 30,000 degrees. If we want to know this distance in kilometers, we must count the seconds elapsed between lightning and thunder, and the result is divided by. Thus, a distance of 1 kilometer will sound approximately three seconds later.
First of all, before the storm, you can't escape because lightning is more common in places where the air is thin, such as a fast moving person, a moving car, a flying airplane. During a storm, it is better to abandon the umbrella with a metal spike, probably invented by risk lovers. It is best to hide at home, provided that the windows and zippers are closed, and electrical appliances in it are excluded from their sockets. Don't defend yourself under tall trees.
Lightning regularly electrocutes people indoors. It can enter a structure in different ways, through drainpipes and water pipes. Lightning can penetrate electrical wiring, the current strength of which in an ordinary house does not reach two hundred amperes and overloads the electrical wiring in jumps from twenty thousand to two hundred thousand amperes. Perhaps the most dangerous path in your home leads directly to your hand through your phone. Nearly two-thirds of indoor electric shocks occur when people pick up a landline telephone during a lightning strike. Cordless phones are safer during thunderstorms, but lightning can electrocute someone standing near the phone's base. Even a lightning rod cannot protect you from all lightning, since it is not capable of catching lightning in the sky.
In an open, safe place we will be in a moving car, because it is better for lightning to strike the dilute air behind the car than the car itself. However, a stationary car will keep us safe because it is close to an ideal Faraday cage that protects against lightning. If we are on the water during a storm, we must get to shore as quickly as possible. But if the storm died out and we couldn't get away, we should at least put up a mast.
Linear lightning, flat lightning, spherical lightning
Linear light, also known as a spark, is the most common type of lightning - the most common lightning. An electric discharge spark occurs in the case of such lightning with a zigzag with branches. Its main spark mainly hits the ground.
About the nature of lightning
There are several different theories explaining the origin of lightning.
Typically, the bottom of the cloud carries a negative charge and the top carries a positive charge, making the cloud-ground system like a giant capacitor.
When the electrical potential difference becomes large enough, a discharge known as lightning occurs between the ground and the cloud, or between two parts of the cloud.
Lightning flashes like a flash that lights up the big sky. This effect causes many subsequent sparks following each other. This type of lightning occurs when there is enough electrical potential in the cloud to create a discharge, but not enough to create lightning. If there are several simultaneous linear discharges at the same time, a so-called lightning rod is formed.
The air around this loop quickly warms up, creating a ball of highly ionized, glowing gas that falls to the Earth's surface. The lightning ball moves just above the surface of the earth in accordance with its magnetic field lines. Ballasts are discharged or exploded or grounded like any ordinary lightning rod. It was too much, and above all, it was too loud. No sleep, no rest, windows don't close in summer, rooster neighbors are so loud that residents have to call the service for help.
Is it dangerous to be in a car during lightning?
In one of these experiments, a meter-long artificial lethal lightning was aimed at the steel roof of a car in which a person was sitting. Lightning passed through the casing without harming a person. How did this happen? Since charges on a charged object repel each other, they tend to move as far apart as possible.
And the services say that this was such a case, but desperate residents themselves silenced the birds. In Labdy they do not want to strive for drastic means, they want peace. Can roosters even shut up? Probably different, but if it was not entirely good, it was at least pleasant, and, like the sun, it was the desire for life right away. In the south of the country, thermometers showed more than 20 degrees Celsius. It is not surprising that the Poles are capturing these rays, because these may be the last such warm days of autumn.
The Christmas Charity Grand Orchestra final will take place on January 14 next year. Before Jurek Ovsiak announced this, the orchestra broke Guinness World Records. This is first aid. In Poland, the campaign involved more than 85,000 people who practiced saving the lives of more than six thousand ghosts. And not about the recording itself, more about education, because knowing how to provide first aid is still not the best.
In the case of a hollow mechanical ball pi cylinder, the charges are distributed over the outer surface of the object. Similarly, if lightning strikes the metal roof of a car, then the repelling electrons will spread extremely quickly over the surface of the car and go through its body into the ground. Therefore, lightning along the surface of a metal car goes into the ground and does not get inside the car. For the same reason, a metal cage is perfect protection against lightning. As a result of artificial lightning striking a car with a voltage of 3 million volts, the potential of the car and the body of the person in it increases to almost 200 thousand volts. At the same time, a person does not experience the slightest sign of an electric shock, since there is no potential difference between any points of his body.
Each lightning bolt takes a fraction of a second, is 2 cm in diameter and ranges from 1 to 50 km in length. Its temperature is five times higher than the surface of the Sun and is about 30 thousand. degrees Celsius. Lightning victims fall 5 times more often than men. At least once a year, lightning strikes a flying passenger plane. The island's inhabitants are bombed on average 222 days a year. The power and strength of lightning lies in the enormous pulse of energy released in a very short time. However, if this energy were expanded, the current could not even power a small light bulb for one month.
This means that staying in a well-grounded building with a metal frame, of which there are many in modern cities, almost completely protects against lightning.
How can we explain that birds sit on the wires completely calmly and with impunity?
The body of a sitting bird is like a branch of a chain (parallel connection). The resistance of this branch with the bird is much greater than the resistance of the wire between the bird's legs. Therefore, the current strength in the bird’s body is negligible. If a bird, sitting on a wire, touched the pole with its wing or tail, or otherwise connected with the ground, it would be instantly killed by the current that would rush through it into the ground.
Anyone who has ever been in the center of a thunderstorm knows how powerful and terrifying the force of nature is. Everyone feels strange in a storm. There is something intriguing, something terrible and amazing at the same time. When a storm comes, we turn off the TV, radio and other electrical appliances, and we hear the sound of ominous thunder. But we are not afraid of lightning, only thunder.
Lightning generates a range of low-frequency sound waves that affect the human psyche, causing a feeling of fear. Therefore, even distant sounds of discharges always seem ominous, causing unpleasant feelings. Lightning is one of the most difficult physics puzzles. Although we have a lot of knowledge and technology, we still don't know how to decongest. The fact that we are connected to electricity has been known for 250 years. Lightning is nothing more than an electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground with a voltage reaching several million volts.
Interesting facts about lightning
The average length of lightning is 2.5 km. Some discharges extend up to 20 km in the atmosphere.
Lightning is beneficial: they manage to snatch millions of tons of nitrogen from the air, bind it and send it into the ground, fertilizing the soil.
But scientists are still wondering where in the cloud such enormous electrical potential is released. Most have a place inside the cloud. They illuminate the cloud from the center and we call it a flat discharge. They are not dangerous because they do not reach the ground. The most dangerous are lightning. These are the ones who usually kill people. This discharge manifests itself as lightning striking a cloud in the ground. It takes a fraction of a second, is 2 cm in diameter and ranges from 1 to 50 km in length.
The most fascinating are the spherical spheres. There are only a few photographs of spherical lightning in the world. This is extremely rare, but perhaps the most spectacular atmospheric phenomenon. This is a type of electrical discharge that appears as a brightly shining sphere. The spherical spherical light can range in size from a few centimeters to several meters. Appears suddenly, and meeting him is one of the most terrifying experiences that nature can provide us. Plasma ball can float in the air for several minutes, it can fall through a chimney, penetrate walls, circulate around an apartment, break a wall, explode and kill people.
Saturn's lightning is a million times stronger than Earth's.
A lightning discharge usually consists of three or more repeated discharges - pulses following the same path. The intervals between successive pulses are very short, from 1/100 to 1/10 s (this is what causes lightning to flicker).
About 700 lightning flashes on Earth every second. World centers of thunderstorms: Java island - 220, equatorial Africa- 150, southern Mexico - 142, Panama - 132, central Brazil - 106 thunderstorm days per year. Russia: Murmansk - 5, Arkhangelsk - 10, St. Petersburg - 15, Moscow - 20 thunderstorm days a year.
Even rarer is pearl lightning. Some scientists doubt the existence of this type of discharge. Lightning formation usually begins with a linear discharge. Lightning is divided into a number of luminous short episodes, reminiscent of a chain of pearls. The phenomenon occurs as if lightning suddenly exploded in many parts. The dotted line of a lightning rod is usually larger in diameter than the lightning bolt. Unfortunately, there is no evidence other than eyewitness accounts that such lightning exists.
Every second strike caused by lightning. Those who survive are subject to serious injury. Lightning views a person as a kind of resistor. Some energy passes through the human body. After a split second, the current flows through the person and goes out. The leading cause of death is cardiac dysfunction after strong current. The flow of lightning current through the body causes a shock with which the human heart reacts with the cameras flickering. This is an irregular and rapid heart tremors that eventually causes the heart to stop functioning.
The air in the zone of the lightning channel almost instantly heats up to a temperature of 30,000-33,000 ° C. On average, about 3,000 people die from lightning strikes in the world every year
Statistics show that every 5,000-10,000 flight hours there is one lightning strike on an aircraft; fortunately, almost all damaged aircraft continue to fly.
Despite the crushing power of lightning, protecting yourself from it is quite simple. During a thunderstorm, you should leave immediately open places, in no case should you hide under separate trees, or be near high masts and power lines. You should not hold steel objects in your hands. Also, during thunderstorms, you cannot use radio communications or mobile phones. Televisions, radios and electrical appliances must be turned off indoors.
Lightning rods protect buildings from lightning damage for two reasons: they allow the charge induced on the building to flow into the air, and when lightning strikes the building, they take it into the ground.
If you find yourself in a thunderstorm, you should avoid taking shelter near single trees, hedges, elevated places and being in open spaces.
We often think that electricity- this is something that is produced only in power plants, and certainly not in the fibrous masses of water clouds, which are so rarefied that you can easily stick your hand into them. However, there is electricity in the clouds, just as there is even in the human body.
The nature of electricity
All bodies are made of atoms - from clouds and trees to the human body. Every atom has a nucleus containing positively charged protons and neutral neutrons. The exception is the simplest hydrogen atom, in the nucleus of which there is no neutron, but only one proton. Negatively charged electrons circulate around the nucleus. Positive and negative charges attract each other, so electrons revolve around the nucleus of an atom, like bees around a sweet pie. The attraction between protons and electrons is due to electromagnetic forces. Therefore, electricity is present everywhere we look. As we see, it is also contained in atoms.
Interesting fact: the nature of lightning lies in the electricity contained in the clouds.
Under normal conditions, the positive and negative charges of each atom balance each other, so bodies consisting of atoms usually do not carry any net charge - neither positive nor negative. As a result, contact with other objects does not cause an electrical discharge. But sometimes the balance of electrical charges in bodies can be disrupted. You may experience this yourself while at home on a cold winter day. The house is very dry and hot. You, shuffling with your bare feet, walk around the palace. Unbeknownst to you, some of the electrons from your soles transferred to the atoms of the carpet.
Now you are carrying an electrical charge because the number of protons and electrons in your atoms is no longer balanced. Now try to grab the metal door handle. A spark will jump between you and her and you will feel an electric shock. What has happened is that your body, which does not have enough electrons to achieve electrical balance, seeks to restore balance through the forces of electromagnetic attraction. And it is restored. Between the hand and the door handle there is a flow of electrons directed towards the hand. If the room was dark, you would see sparks. Light is visible because electrons, when they jump, emit quanta of light. If the room is quiet, you will hear a slight crackling sound.
Electricity is all around us y and is contained in all bodies. Clouds in this sense are no exception. Against the background of the blue sky they look very harmless. But just like you in the room, they can carry an electrical charge. If so, beware! When the cloud restores the electrical balance within itself, a whole fireworks display breaks out.
How does lightning appear?
Here's what happens: powerful air currents constantly circulate in a dark, huge thundercloud, pushing various particles together - grains of ocean salt, dust, and so on. Just as your soles, when rubbed against a carpet, are freed from electrons, particles in a cloud, when they collide, are freed from electrons, which jump to other particles. This is how charge redistribution occurs. Some particles that have lost their electrons have a positive charge, while others that have taken on extra electrons now have a negative charge.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, heavier particles become negatively charged, while lighter particles become positively charged. Thus, the heavier lower part of the cloud becomes negatively charged. The negatively charged lower part of the cloud pushes electrons towards the ground, as like charges repel each other. Thus, a positively charged part is formed under the cloud earth's surface. Then, according to exactly the same principle by which a spark jumps between you and the doorknob, the same spark will jump between the cloud and the ground, only very large and powerful this is lightning. The electrons fly in a giant zigzag towards the ground, finding their protons there. Instead of a barely audible crackling sound, there is a strong clap of thunder.
If we watch the whole process in slow motion, this is what we see. A dimly glowing band called a conductor protrudes from the base of the cloud. The guide, also known as the “leader,” begins to approach the ground with quick, sinuous movements. First he jumps 50 meters to the right, then 50 meters to the left. This is the same zigzag that we see in the sky. The leader's path to the ground continues for a fraction of a second, The current strength in lightning reaches 200 amperes. In home wiring, the current does not exceed 6 amperes. When the leader is about 20 meters from the ground, a spark jumps out from it towards the leader and connects with him. A dazzling zigzag rushes upward towards the cloud, The current reaches 10,000 amperes.
Fun fact: a lightning strike contains enough electricity to illuminate every home and business in an entire city, but only for a fraction of a second.
The next leader quietly slides down the resulting corridor, towards whom a giant spark again flies. The temperature during a lightning strike reaches 28,000 degrees Celsius. Streams of electricity fly up and down the channel many times: it is this process that we perceive as one lightning strike.
How big is the energy of one lightning bolt?
Approximately 20 thousand megawatts, this energy is enough to illuminate all the houses and businesses of the entire republic, although only for a split second.
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