How does lightning form?

As I went  to pick P & P from the school bus stop I noticed that the sky had turned dark with clouds hiding the Sun behind them. Soon, we could see lightning flashes with loud thunder sounds. The kids got little worried about what was happening.

So, I sat with them to explain how does lightning form and why it forms. As I explained it to them they seemed relieved and went about playing with their toys and reading books to keep them busy. 

How does lightning form?

When Sun heats up the air, the warm air rises. As the air rises water vapour  cools and forms clouds. As more air rise the cloud starts to grow bigger and bigger. In the top of the clouds the temperature is below freezing and water vapour turns into ice. Now the cloud becomes a thundercloud.

When lots of ice come together they start to bump into each other. All these collisions cause lot of electric charge.The whole cloud is with lot of electric charge. The lighter positively charge come together  on the top and the heavier negative charge pile up on the bottom.When both positive and negative charges grow bigger they form a giant spark. This is like a static electricity with sparks, but they are bigger in size.

A group up of positive charge builds up beneath the surface of the cloud due to the attraction of the negative charge on the bottom of the cloud. The grounds positive charge piles up on top of the trees, lightning conductors which when reacts with the negative charge on the clouds causes sparks of lightning.

This video shows how the lightning occurs in a very slow motion. Enjoy have a lightning weekend!

Comments

Post a Comment

Share your thoughts here:

Popular posts from this blog

Osmosis in potato

Image
After checking out my plants in the balcony, the young girl in my class had a curious question "Aunty, how do the roots know when to absorb water?".  "You mean, how does water get into roots ..right?" asked my daughter walking towards the girl.  "Yes, thats what I don't understand " replied the girl. Listening to their conversation I said "water enters the root hair cells by 'osmosis' and we will do an experiment to understand osmosis today".  And that's how we decided to do an experiment on osmosis.   What is Osmosis? Plants absorb water from the soil by 'osmosis'. Osmosis is the movement of water through a semi permeable membrane. Water moves into plant cells through osmosis by making them turgid or stiff to hold the plants upright. Osmosis is passive transport, meaning it does not require energy to be applied.   We also discussed about how osmosis is helpful for photosynthesis as well. Otherwise the plan
Read more

Why cut apples turn brown in color?

Image
I was cutting the apples into pieces when kids entered the science class. Noticing that, they all assumed I was going to give it to them to eat :-) which I didn't. So, one of them asked me " Aunty, you had left the cut apple pieces out. Will they not turn brown in color?". I was glad that they had initiated the discussion for the day. Further, I asked them to think about things that turn brown when left outside. That triggered them to wonder 1. Why cut apple pieces  turn brown in colour? 2. Why copper vessels change color from pink to brown when kept out? 3. Why does Iron rust when exposed to moisture? Let us first check out why do cut apples turn brown in colour? Have you ever bitten into an apple, left it for sometime to find that it had turned brown in colour. When apple is cut or bruised, oxygen is introduced into the cells which then reacts with the enzyme (polyphenol oxidase) in the chloroplast to turn into brown colour. The fru
Read more

The hoop glider!!!

Image
Our activity started with kids imagining to go to school  by a car, that is environmental friendly and flies in the air. One of them said , if he lived on a mountain and the school was in a valley he would do paragliding. So, we talked about gliders and how they fly without motors.Gliders always descend relative to the air in which they are flying. Para gliders, hand gliders are some of the gliders that we see these days. What are Gliders? Gliders are a type of aircraft which do not have engine, but use the wing design and air flow to fly around. Now, it was time for them to build one themselves, but using a different design and shape that they had seen. I gave them a straw to throw, which did not go very far. As they were brain storming, the idea of adding loops instead of the wings came to them. They were quick to decide that they would need 2 hoops instead of one to make it fly for some time. That is how kids made a hoop glider. It worked really well. design for mak
Read more