LightningLight! What is it? Where does it come from? What can we do with it to help humanity? It allows us to see the unknown, the dark places for years. It helps us see what's around us. Different light sources can be used to power things around us. Lightning is a source of light. Lightning is an electrostatic discharge between two electrically charged regions between the clouds and the surface of a planet. Charged regions within the atmosphere equalize through a flash called a shot. There are three types of lightning coming from clouds, intra-clouds; it is from a cloud to itself, from a cloud to a cloud; from cloud to cloud and from cloud to earth. Earth, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are the only planets in our solar system where lightning occurs. Cloud-to-ground lightning is the most common of the three types. About 100 strikes per second and each bolt can contain up to a billion volts of electricity. It also produces a lot of heat. A single flash can heat the surrounding air up to five times hotter than the surface of the sun. This causes the air to expand and vibrate causing a thunderclap immediately after the flash. Lightning is not only an amazing sight but also extremely dangerous. Every year around 2,000 people die worldwide from lightning, and hundreds more suffer from permanent problems such as memory loss, dizziness and numbness. Electrical Storms When an electrical storm occurs, the clouds are like giant capacitors. The top has a positive charge while the bottom has a negative charge. While no one in the scientific community agrees on how clouds get their charge, most believe it happens during the water cycle. Strange as it may seem, clouds can contain a mill... in the center of the card... ionized air is called a pitch leader. Meanwhile, positive charge is becoming larger on the Earth's surface beneath objects, and people also respond locally to this strong electric field by emitting positive streamers. When a streamer and a step leader meet, they can form a complete path for lightning to travel from the cloud to the ground. After this fateful meeting, love at first sight occurs. Eventually the air around the impact site heats up and expands in such a way that it causes a shock wave in the form of a sound wave that radiates away from the impact path (thunder). Sources Zavisa, John. "How lightning works." How things work. HowStuffWorks.com, April 01, 2000. Web. February 14, 2014"Lightning." National geographic. Np, nd Web. February 12, 2014."Weather Wiz Kids Weather Information for Kids." Weather Wiz Kids Weather information for kids. Np, nd Web. 13 February. 2014