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Asked by jakey to Daniel, Jon, Louise, Sharon, Zoe on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
Question: How is heat suddenly generated to the extent of 50,000 Fahrenheit during lightning?
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Daniel Richardson answered on 14 Jun 2010:
I literally have no idea. It’s something to do with a whole bunch of electrons though…. If you find out, then tell me this:
Lightning will hit the highest thing in the vicinity, right, like a church tower or the tallest tree? But how does it know where the highest thing is? When the lightning bolt leaves the cloud, how does it know what direction to travel in?
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Louise Dash answered on 14 Jun 2010:
Lightning is caused by a massive discharge of electrical energy between the clouds and earth – or you if you’re unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong place!
As the lightning strikes, there’s a massive electrical current that flows between the sky and earth – it can be many thousands of Amperes. How much is that? Well, you get about 13 Amperes from a domestic electricity supply, and that’s plenty to kill you! So thousands of Amperes is really enormous. Now imagine the heat you can get from an electric bar fire at home, and multiply that by a few thousand!
The lightning is so powerful that it heats the air to incredible temperatures – the 50,000 Fahrenheit (or about 30,000 Celsius, much hotter than here in York, in fact about 6 times as hot as the surface of the sun!) you mention. That’s hot enough to make the surrounding air literally explode, which causes a shockwave that we hear as thunder.
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Jon Copley answered on 15 Jun 2010:
Wow! I had no idea lightning was so hot. And no idea how that happens, sorry.
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Sharon Sneddon answered on 16 Jun 2010:
me neither, I’m learning lots with these questions!! I’m scared of lightening, I’m a bit of a scardycat!
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Zoe Duck answered on 18 Jun 2010:
I’m not too sure about this one.
I guess it is due to the large amounts of energy released which is given out as heat.
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