power in the sky

It was a stormy night…

Revisiting a well known fact…

By definition, lightning is a sudden electrostatic discharge during an electrical storm. This discharge allows charged regions in the atmosphere to temporarily equalize themselves, when they strike an object on the ground. Although lightning is always accompanied by the sound of thunder, distant lightning may be seen but be too far away for the thunder to be heard.

…

Because the plasma channel superheats the air in its immediate vicinity, the gaseous molecules undergo a rapid increase in pressure and thus expand outward from the lightning creating an audible shock wave

But while the cause of thunder is usually well known, one thing that puzzled me was why thunder has that rumbling sound… (we might joke with kids that God up in heaven is rearranging the furniture 😉 ) …the reason happens to be…

Since the sound waves propagate not from a single source, but along the length of the lightning’s path, the origin’s varying distances can generate a rolling or rumbling effect.

~ Phys.org: What causes lightning?

The Phys.org link includes some fascinating information on Benjamin Franklin’s experiment in flying a kite during a storm 🙂

A few more attempts to capture some more bolts in the beautiful night…

A little girl was saying lightning makes a little sound, but thunder makes a lot of sound 🙂 It was fun discussing the basics 🙂 After a while she realized – oh light is really the fastest thing in the world?

Photographs by Sanjay Mysoremutt

Details: with a long exposure of around 8 sec with ISO-50. (Done with the Pro mode of a Samsung mobile camera on a tripod)