What is Lightning? How does it Form? And what if it Strikes You?

Lightning

If there is one thing i'm sure of is that you don't turn into flash when struck by lightning and you wouldn't be turning spiderman when a spider bits you. ( this one's from experience )

WHAT IS LIGHTING?

Lightning are just Static shocks of electricity, the exact same ones you experience when you sometimes take off your jumper. The only difference is that the
magnitude of these shocks is on a whole different level when they occur as lightning.

HOW DOES LIGHTNING FORMS?

When temperature up on the clouds is below freezing point,the water vapours present inside clouds turns to Ice. Now these pieces of ice present crystals bump into one another as they move around. All these collisions causes the Build up of electric charge.

                                       Gradually the whole cloud fills up with charges. The lighter positive charges forms at the top of the clouds whereas the heavier negative charges rests on the bottom. When these charges grow large enough, huge sparks or lightning occurs between them. This is just like a static spark but a huge one.

HOW CAN LIGHTNING HITS THE GROUND OR PEOPLE?

The electrical field on the cloud sometimes becomes so intense that it causes the negative electrons in the cloud to repel electrons on the ground such that surface becomes positively charged. These charges accumulate on a high place e.g. a car, a tree or even a person. Once this happens the air molecules ionize, discharging the electrical field back to earth and neutralizing charge difference. This is lightning folks.

HOW LIGHTNING ROD WORKS?

Its an ordinary pointed metallic rod attached to the roof or a high place. Its commonly an inch in diameter. It is connected to a hue piece of copper or aluminium wire which goes to the conductor grid buried in the ground nearby. As lightning is most likely to hit a high metallic rod and a low resistance path to the ground so the nearby areas are mostly saved.

lightning rods were invented by Benjamin Franklin.

WHAT IF LIGHTNING STRIKES YOU?

Even though the lightning hits you for  just 3 milli seconds its understandable that the consequences can be life threatening due to following reasons:

• Lightning consists of 300kV of electricity.
• Lightning is around 27000C which is six times hotter than the surface of sun.

The surrounding air can be heated about 50,000 F causing 3rd degree burns at the bolts exit and entry points in addition to the damage to the cardiac muscles and numerous other injuries. People even end up in comma or die.

CONCLUSION:

Holding a metallic object increases the chances of being struck by lightning.

In the end of the day just remember that there are people out there who have survived even after being struck by lightning multiple times.

This man survived lightning SEVEN times.