Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 09:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gene Thompson <gthompso@ccsf.cc.ca.us>
To: pinhole@exploratorium.edu
Subject: Lightning
In-Reply-To: <E0ypE1l-0002tX-00@mole.slip.net>
I just did a one week meteorology workshop, and, as part of the discussion
on thunderstorms, we were talking about lightning and how it forms, but
I'm still not clear on it. There was talk about charges forming around
the water molecules that form the clouds, and that the charges line up so
that (I'm not sure if I'm remembering this right) the positive charges are
in the center and the negative charges are on the outside. Then the
negatives get stripped away and you have a charge imbalance, hence
lightning. Now, I have no idea of the scale of these charge imbalances,
or what causes them. Are these due to the polar nature of water? The
people doing the workshop were good on cloud-sized physics, but weren't
up on the smaller stuff. Can anybody out there help?
Ellen Koivisto
George Washington High School, SF
gthompso@ccsf.cc.ca.us