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As the heated air expands, the pressure drops, the air cools, and it contracts. The result is a shock wave, with a loud, booming burst of noise sent in every direction. A massive cloud presages a thunderstorm above Groom, a tiny community along old U.S. Route 66 in the Texas panhandle.
How do clouds create lightning and thunder?
Within a thundercloud way up in the sky, many small bits of ice (frozen raindrops) bump into each other as they move around in the air. All of those collisions create an electric charge. The charge coming up from these points eventually connects with a charge reaching down from the clouds and – zap – lightning strikes!.
What causes thunder lightning?
Lightning is a giant spark of electricity in the atmosphere between clouds, the air, or the ground. Lightning causes thunder! Energy from a lightning channel heats the air briefly to around 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, much hotter than the surface of the sun. This causes the air to explode outward.
Can humans touch clouds?
Well, the simple answer is yes, but we will get into it. Clouds look like they would be fluffy and fun to play in, but they are actually made of trillions “cloud droplets”. Nonetheless, if you were to be able to touch a cloud, it wouldn’t really feel like anything, just a little wet.
How is thunder made?
Thunder is caused by the rapid expansion of the air surrounding the path of a lightning bolt. From the clouds to a nearby tree or roof, a lightning bolt takes only a few thousandths of a second to split through the air. The loud thunder that follows the lightning bolt is commonly said to come from the bolt itself.
Why do clouds thunder?
Thunder is caused by lightning, which is essentially a stream of electrons flowing between or within clouds, or between a cloud and the ground. The air surrounding the electron stream is heated to as hot as 50,000 degrees Farhenheit, which is three times hotter than the surface of the sun.
Why is thunder so loud?
A big noise Why is thunder so loud? It’s because the amount of electrical energy that flows from the cloud to the ground is so enormous: it’s like a very big waterfall of electricity. The louder the sound that you hear, the closer you are to the lightning. Light travels through air much faster than sound.
Does thunder only happen when its raining?
This can occur when storm clouds form from moisture at very high levels, but as the air below is dry, rain evaporates before it falls to Earth. So thunder can happen when there’s no rain in sight!Oct 21, 2018.
Can you put a cloud in a jar?
Clouds are made of cold water vapor that is condensed into droplets of water around dust particles. Clouds are just fog high up in the sky. You can make a cloud in a jar by placing ice on top of a jar filled with hot water. The sudden temperature change causes condensation to form.
Can a cloud fall to the ground?
A cloud doesn’t usually FALL to the ground (unless you count rain, which isn’t really a cloud anymore, but it is the water FROM the cloud). But it is very common for a cloud to FORM on the ground, and it is called fog.
How do clouds disappear?
The three primary ways that clouds dissipate is by (1) the temperature increasing, (2) the cloud mixing with drier air, or (3) the air sinking within the cloud. When the temperature increases, the air has a higher capacity to evaporate liquid water. Some environmental air does mix into the cloud mass.
Can there be thunder without lightning?
No, it is not possible to have thunder without lightning. Thunder starts as a shockwave from the explosively expanding lightning channel when a large current causes rapid heating. However, it is possible that you might see lightning and not hear the thunder because it was too far away. Thunder is caused by lightning.
Why does thunder shake the house?
Why does the house shake when there is a thunder storm? Your house will shake depending the closeness of the lightning. Thunder is a sonic boom that comes from the rapid heating of the air around a lightning strike. Sonic booms cause massive shaking to nearby objects (your house).
Is lightning hotter than the sun?
In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun). When lightning strikes a tree, the heat vaporizes any water in its path possibly causing the tree to explode or a strip of bark to be blown off.
How can thunder hurt you?
The electricity that does enters a person’s body can cause devastating neurological damage, including memory loss, chronic pain and seizures in addition to the relatively superficial burns on the outside of someone’s skin.
What causes thunder for kids?
The lightning flash heats the air around it so quickly that the air expands very fast. When you heat something, it gets bigger – it expands. The air around the lightning flash expands so fast that it makes a shock wave in the air. That shock wave is the thunder that you hear.
Is thunder a sonic boom?
Thunder is the acoustic shock wave resulting from the extreme heat generated by a lightning flash. This is where air expands so rapidly that it compresses the air in front of it, forming a shock wave similar to a sonic boom. Exploding fireworks produce a similar result.
