The lightning tag has no wiki summary.
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Lightning and Charge Displacement
There is something I don't really understand about flashes of lightning.
When a flash occurs, how come electricity be transferred at the speed of light since electricity's displacement is very slow ?
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6answers
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Lightning strikes the Ocean I'm swimming in - what happens?
I'm swimming in the ocean and there's a thunderstorm. Lightning bolts hit ships around me. Should I get out of the water?
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1answer
338 views
Can energy be extracted from clouds?
Can cloud charge imbalance be used as an energy source?
First off quite some energy must be present in clouds: a lightning path is quite long, and electrical breakdown of air requires about 1MV/m. ...
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1answer
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How much energy is in a lightning strike?
According to Wikipedia an average lightning has 1TW, the whole world used 16TW in 2006. (I suppose this means the same as 16TWh in one year?) Sometimes the lightning reaches 100kA. This peak last for ...
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2answers
347 views
Voltage and current of positive lightning
For a physics issues investigation I chose to investigate what effects lightning could have on an aeroplane while in flight if it was struck and then go on to discuss some possible implications of ...
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1answer
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Rolling sound of thunder
When sound of thunder travels to the listener from its location,different parts of the same wave have to travel through air of different moisture levels,densities and molar masses.
This is what I ...
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5answers
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Can the lightning be captured and used as power source?
I would like to update my knowledge in this area, that is really out-of-dated and stopped somewhere like ten years ago.
I asked the very same question on my physics lecture at my studies and got the ...
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0answers
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Nature of electricity [duplicate]
Suppose a lightning strikes and there is an iron rod and a coconut tree. How does the electricity know that rod is the least resistant path before hand.
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2answers
253 views
Where does the energy of a lightning strike go?
Lightning contains a lot of energy, so where does this energy go after lightning has hit the ground?
Does it travel all the way to the core? What happens after that?
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2answers
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How does lightning “know” where to go?
If lightning comes down in, say, a large flat field with a lightning rod sticking out of the middle, the lightning will strike the rod.
How does it "know" the rod is there?
Will it always strike the ...
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2answers
659 views
Does Fire Conduct Electricity? Why?
Recently, I have stumbled upon a YouTube video by Veritasium describing the conductivity of fire. My question is: how exactly does fire conduct electricity? I am a high school student; therefore ...
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1answer
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Travel direction of lightning
Is it possible to know whether a lightning bolt travel from the ground to the sky or from the sky to the ground?
Alternatively, it could be both sides approaching
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2answers
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Lightning driven electrolysis
Could a lightning bolt be harnessed to perform electrolysis, would a useful amount of hydrogen be produced?
I'm imagining some industrial scale device in the ocean with some hydrogen capture ...
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1answer
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Is there any significance to 1.21 GW?
In connection with a related question on Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange page: does this number 1.21 GW make any sense? What is 1.21 GWatts? With what can you compare it? Can the ...
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1answer
90 views
Lightning During a Snow Storm
Lightning and thunder during a snow storm is uncommon. As far as I know, more uncommon than during a typical rain storm. Why is this? I speculate it might be one, or both, of the following two ...
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1answer
417 views
Electric field inside and outside a metallic hollow sphere
1) It is known that inside a metallic hollow sphere it will not experience outside electric field because of the charge separation of electrons and holes at the surface of sphere and creating an equal ...
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1answer
624 views
Can Gases conduct Electricity?
Liquid electrolytes ionize and hence a current can pass through them. So if a gas can ionize, can it conduct electricity too? If so, what are a few such gases?
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3answers
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Is there a way to save electricity from lightning? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Can the lightning be captured and used as power source?
Each lightning contains several kilo volts of electricity.
Saving them could be a boon to soaring need of it.
Is ...
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1answer
115 views
Loopy lightning
What causes lightning to follow the path it does ?
picture from BBC news: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/62891000/jpg/_62891901_untitled-1copy.jpg main page: ...
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2answers
148 views
is lightning attracted to pointy objects?
Advice I was given when growing up: in a thunderstorm, stay away from tall, pointy things.
It's pretty obvious why lightning would prefer to strike tall objects, but pointy ones?
Is there any truth ...
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3answers
307 views
Extended sound of thunder
Why does the sound of thunder last several seconds even when lightning lasts for only fraction of a second?
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1answer
532 views
Can lightning be used to solve NP-complete problems?
I'm a MS/BS computer science guy who is wondering about why lightning can't (or can?) be used to solve NP complete problems efficiently, but I don't understand the physics behind lightning, so I'm ...
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2answers
296 views
Algorithm of Lightning Strikes?
Given an array of charge for a given area (2D or 3D), what algorithm would describe the path that lightning takes?
An example algorithm would be from the highest charge of the cloud, find the lowest ...
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1answer
157 views
Phyics Explanation for the Tubular Shape of Petrified Lightning
When lightning strikes the ground in a sandy location it may fuze sand grains together to form a mineraloid known as Fulgurite. Is there a physics explanation for the tubular shape? Why is it hollow ...
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1answer
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Why is it that when driving in a car, and a lightning bolt strikes, my AM radio gets cut off for a while, but FM stays on
I noticed this one day, a lightning/thunder occurred and my Fabulosa Spanish music died for a second.
But not FM? Thank You
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4answers
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Why stay in the car during thunderstorms?
So there appears to be quite a bit of misinformation on the web as to why people should stay in their cars during a thunderstorm. So I'd like to clear some things up. One such non-nonsensical answer ...
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2answers
415 views
Lightning and nuclear fusion
I'm going to be brief, I just saw a Discovery Channel show that showed a lot of interesting phenomena around lightning (like elves, how cool is that(!)), and got me wondering.
1) Thinking of ...
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2answers
297 views
A lightning protection device physics
Here is a description of the principle of the operation of a new lightning device:
During a storm the ambient electric field may rise to
between 10 to 20 kV/m. As soon as the field exceeds
a thresold ...
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1answer
268 views
Why are cold thunderstorms rare?
FYI: I imagine the physics of thunderstorms involves wind stripping electrons from condensed water cells (raindrops or snowflakes). Like a Van De Graaff generator, sort of; I'm also using Wilson's ...
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Why is it that using cell phone can invite lighting strike? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Is it safe to use any wireless device during a lightning storm?
We often hear the tale that a person gets stuck by lighting when he is unfortunate enough to use a cell ...
