Lighting, Please Don’t ‘Barbeque’ Me

Every time when I see a flash over the sky during raining day, I am sure will use my hand to cover my ears. Why I do so? Because every time when the flash pass by and ended, it sure will follow up by an ‘amazing’ and loud sound which will hurt my hearing system. The sound that I am talking about is thunder. Usually, the thunder will come along with lighting; they were just like ‘couple’ and ‘dark-seeker’. I said both of them are ‘couple’ because they can’t be separated, every time during the raining day both of them sure will show up after one and another. Besides, they are also given the name as ‘dark-seeker’ by me because they usually only show up during the heavily raining day when the sky turns into dark. So, today my topic will be more focus on lighting; I will try to explain why lighting these phenomena could be happen.

1st at all, we need to know what is lighting. Lightning is a very dangerous, bright flash of electricity which is produced by the thunderstorm. If you hear the sound of thunder, then you are in high possibilities danger from lightning. Lightning is a ‘killer’ where it kills and injures people more and more each year, where the number of victims is around 75 to 100 people per year.

(Those who ‘hit’ by the lighting can be consider really bad luck. Pity for them. Sigh…)

Lightning is an electric current. The first process that involve in the generation of lightning will be the forcible separation of positive and negative charges within a cloud or air and this process is known as polarisation mechanism. This mechanism involved 2 components. The 1st component is the falling droplets of the ice and the rain become electrically polarized as they fall through the electric field which is created by the atmospheres natural. While the 2nd, will be the collision that occurs between the ice particles. As the result, the ice particles will become electric charged by the process of electrostatic induction. Within a thundercloud way up to the sky, actually it contains many small bits of ice (frozen raindrops) where they bump into each other as they move around in the air. The positive charged crystals (the ice particles) tend to rise to the top of the cloud, causing the cloud top full with positive charge and the negative charges crystals will drop to the middle and bottom layers of the cloud, forming a negatively charged. After a moment, the whole cloud will fills up with electrical charges. Now, cloud-to-cloud lighting can appear at this point. Since there are ‘sufficient’ opposite attraction occurs, it will also cause electric discharge to build up on the ground beneath the cloud, producing the bolt. The grounds electrical charge concentrates around anything that sticks up, such as mountains, people, or trees. The charge coming up from these points eventually connects with a charge reaching down from the clouds and - zoop - lightning strikes!

It has been studied by the researches and found out that these discharges are eventually triggered by the cosmic ray strikes which ionise the atoms and releasing electrons that are accelerated by the electric fields. This will ionise the other air molecules, creating an air conductive pathway and a lightning starts to strike. During the strike, successive portions of air become conductive as the electrons and positive ions (also known as proton) of air molecules which are pulled away from each other and forced to flow in opposite directions (stepped channels called step leaders). When a charged step leader get near to the ground, the attraction of the opposite charges will occurs on the ground and thus creating an electric field. The electric field is much higher on trees and tall buildings. If the electric field is strong enough, a discharge can initiate from the ground. This discharge starts as positive streamer, and if it develops as a positive leader can eventually connect to the descending discharge from the cloud. Lightning can also occur within the ash clouds from eruptions or can be caused by violent forest fires which both of these cases generate sufficient dust to create a static charge.

Ding-Dong ... Experiment time :)

Here are the 2 simple experiments to let you get the opportunity to made lighting and also the thunder on your own. Now faster move your hands and try it out today.


The 1st experiment that we are going to do is….. Lighting Making

Material:

· 1 aluminium pie pan
· 1 small piece of wool fabric
· 1 Styrofoam plate
· 1 pencil with a new eraser
· 1 thumbtack


Procedure:

1. Push the thumbtack through the center of the aluminium pie pan from the bottom

2. Push the eraser end of the pencil into the thumbtack.

3. Put the styrofoam plate on a table with upside-down. Now, quickly rub the underneath of the plate with the wool for a couple of minutes.

4. Pick up the aluminium pie pan using the pencil as a handle and place it on top of the upside-down styrofoam plate that you were just rubbing with the wool.

5. Touch the aluminium pie pan with your finger. You should feel a shock. If you don’t feel anything, try rubbing the styrofoam plate again.

6. Once you feel the shock, try turning the lights out before you touch the pan again. Check out what you see! You should see a spark!! (Bling bling….)

Why could this happen? It is all about the static electricity. In this experiment, lighting could happen because due to the attraction between the positive charges (the aluminium pie pan) and the negative charges (the fingers). The resulting spark is like a mini lightning bolt.



While the 2nd experiment that we are going to do now is ... Made Thunder

(P/s: This experiment is just simple and easy and it sometimes does happen in our daily life, therefore I believe that everyone done this ‘experiment’ before)

Material:

All you need is just a brown paper lunch bag or a normal paper bag

Process:

1. Blow into the brown paper lunch bag and fill it up with air.

2. Twist the open end and close with your hand.

3. Quickly hit the bag with your free hand.

Now you definitely will heard a sound “pup”

The purpose for hitting the bag is to let the air inside the bag to compress quickly and the pressure will breaks the bag. The air which is inside the bag will rushes out and pushes the air outside away from the bag. The air will continued to move forward in a wave. When the moving air reaches our ear, we will hear a sound. Actually, thunder is produced in a similar way. As lightning strikes, the energy which is given off will heat the air through which it passes. This heated air quickly expands and producing energetic waves of air resulting in a sound called thunder.




This is the extra information, extra knowledge:

What causes thunder?Thunder is caused by lightning. When a lightning bolt travels from the cloud to the ground it actually opens up a little hole in the air, called a channel. Once then light is gone the air collapses back in, it creates a sound wave that we hear as thunder. The reason we see lightning before we hear thunder is because light travels faster than sound!




Lighting safety tips !!! (Pay attention here and remember as much as you can)



IF YOU’RE OUTDOORS:

always keep an eye at the sky. Try to look for darkening skies, any flashes of lightning, or increasing winds. The reason for doing this is because lightning often proceed rain, so don’t wait for the rain to begin. If hear the sound of thunder, better go to a safe place immediately. The best or recommended place to go is a sturdy building or get inside the car, but make sure the car’s windows are shut. You should stay away from sheds, picnic areas, baseball dugouts and bleachers. If there is no shelter around, don’t stay under or near the trees. Put your feet together and place your hands over your ears to minimize hearing damage from thunder. If you’re with a group of people stay about 15 feet from each other. Remember, stay out of water, because it’s a great conductor of electricity. Swimming, wading, snorkelling and scuba diving are avoided to carry out. Also, don’t stand in puddles and avoid metal. Stay away from clotheslines, fences, and drop your backpacks because they often have metal on them. If you’re playing an outdoor activity, wait at least 30 minutes after the last observed lightning strike or thunder.

IF YOU’RE INDOORS:

Avoid water as water is a great conductor of electricity, so do not take shower, wash hands, wash dishes or do laundry during lighting. Do not use a corded telephone as lightning may strike exterior phone lines. Do not use electric equipment such as computers and appliances during a storm. If can, stay away from windows and doors and stay off porches.

IF SOMEONE IS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING:

Don’t panic or be ‘busybody’. What should do is faster call for help. Call 9-1-1 or send for help immediately. Is okay to touch the injured person as human does not carry an electrical charge.

If you follow those safety tips, at least it can lower down the posibilities of getting 'hit' by the lighting.

Before I end my post, I would like to ask a question. Do you think lighting is scary and dangerous? In my opinion, although lighting cannot be denied that is a very dangerous and scary phenomena, but if compared to our society today (for instance, murderer cases, rape cases that increasing day by day), lighting is not a big deal, it was just a normal, mother's nature creaction. Don't you think so? Therefore, from now onwards don’t get frighten by the lighting & thunder, you should face it as a men. Haha :D