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If you time the gap between a flash of lightning and its clap of thunder as 6 seconds, roughly how far away is the storm? If you liked this problem, here is an NRICH task which challenges you to use similar mathematical ideas.
Mar 24, 2022 · Chief meteorologist Ashlee Baracy explains the relationship between lightning and thunder.
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Apr 14, 2016 · You can explain that lightning is a loud noise caused by electricity in the clouds. Once the children see the lightning, have them count slowly until they hear the thunder. It takes about 5 seconds for the sound of thunder to travel one mile so the higher the number the farther away the storm is.
- How Lightning Works
- How Thunder Works
- Seeing Lightning Before Hearing Thunder
- References
Lightning in thunderstorms comes from cumulonimbus clouds. The average duration of a lightning strike is 0.52 seconds, but it consists of a series of shorter strokes each lasting between 60 and 70 microseconds. On average, a lightning strike releases a gigajoule of energy and heats air to temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. ...
Thunder is the sound of the shockwave produced by the rapid heating and expansion of air, followed by cooling and flowing into the vacuumformed by the expansion. While it isn’t a perfect analogy, consider the loud sound you hear from popping a balloon, as pressurized air rushes out. The shockwave also resembles that of an explosion. Thunder is loud...
You see lightning before you hear thunder. The speed of light in air is much greater than the speed of sound. If you are very close to a lightning strike, you see lightning, hear the “snick” sound of the electrical discharge, and then both hear and feel the booming shockwave of the thunder. While you can’t reliably tell the direction of lightning b...
Graneau, P. (1989). “The cause of thunder”. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 22 (8): 1083–1094. doi:10.1088/0022-3727/22/8/012Jennings, S. G.; Latham, J. (1972). “The charging of water drops falling and colliding in an electric field”. Archiv für Meteorologie, Geophysik und Bioklimatologie, Serie A. Springer Science and B...Rakov, Vladimir A.; Uman, Martin A. (2007). Lightning: Physics and Effects. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-03541-5.thunder - A shock wave, a huge vibration in the air, that we hear as a loud rumbling sound. lightning - A bright light in the sky.
Mar 14, 2021 · Learn how to use the time between lightning and thunder to tell how far away lightning is. See how many seconds indicates one mile.
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Thunder and lightning storms occur when warm, moist air rises quickly to form cumulonimbus clouds. The air and water in these clouds start rubbing against each other. This builds up electricity between the cloud and the ground, eventually resulting in a flash of lightning.