Here is this week’s Trivia Tuesday question!
What causes thunder?
A. Clouds bumping into each other
B. Lightning rapidly heating the air
C. Rain droplets colliding
D. Heavy rain falling
Answer: B. Lightning rapidly heating the air!
Fun fact: Lightning can heat the air to about 50,000°F in roughly 0.2 seconds. This extreme heat causes the air to expand explosively, creating a shockwave we hear as thunder.
Since light travels much faster than sound, you can estimate how far away a lightning strike occurred by counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder.
For example, if you see lightning and count 10 seconds before hearing thunder, the strike was about 2 miles away.
How does lightning form?
Lightning develops inside thunderstorms when strong updrafts cause ice crystals and graupel (soft hail) to collide within the cloud.
These collisions separate electrical charges, with positive charges rising to the top of the storm and negative charges sinking toward the bottom.
As this charge separation grows, the atmosphere can no longer hold it back, and a sudden electrical discharge occurs—that’s lightning.
