yes, i know...it sucks, but professors are wrong a LOT...i had to prove to my third grade teacher that the moon rotates while traveling around the earth, cause she didn't believe me...and some teachers use textbooks that are so bad, they show things like, the equator going through Texas, and stupid stuff like that!!!
Originally posted by JediHDM
yes, i know...it sucks, but professors are wrong a LOT...i had to prove to my third grade teacher that the moon rotates while traveling around the earth, cause she didn't believe me...and some teachers use textbooks that are so bad, they show things like, the equator going through Texas, and stupid stuff like that!!!
OMG, really?... i can believe that. the equator goes through london right...right?
Your local scientist to the rescue.
One of the reasons for the confusion about lightning and whether or not it strikes from the clouds or the ground has to do with the stages of a flash.
The most common type of lightning starts from the cloud and develops through a downwards channel of strongly ionised air-molecules (atoms and molecules gets stripped of electrons), and this channel is elongated step by step towards the ground.
When this channel is close to the surface, a channel will start from the surface up towards the channel going down from the cloud. When the two channels meet this system short-circuits when electric current springs between the ground and the cloud.
Almost all lightening starts from the clouds. By “start” I mean the channel initiates from the cloud. But sometimes they’re initiated from below. The frequency of this phenomenon depends on the height of the clouds.
So basically: A lightning can spring from both the ground (90 %) and from the clouds (10 % of the cases).