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What is the result of rapid heating of air around a lightning bolt?

The temperature of lightning can be around 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit; that's about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. The heat causes surrounding air to rapidly expand and vibrate, which creates the sound of thunder.


Why thunder sound the way it is?

AnswerDepends on where it is heard. In the barren desert with no mountain ranges, it will simply go "boom" and is gone. When surrounded by mountain ranges, the sound echoes off those hard surfaces and heads toward another. It then sounds much fiercer ... so it all depends where it is heard. Also, sound waves travel with slightly different velocities in air depending on their frequency. Higher frequencies travel faster than lower frequencies. Lightning makes sound over a wide range of frequencies, so the higher pitches get to you first. This is why thunder will crack first (high frequency) and then rumble later (low frequencies). It is also why the time-length of the thunder can be used to determine how far away the lightning was. The farther away the lightning, the more spread out the higher frequencies are from the lower frequencies.


What does the time difference between thunder and lightning mean?

It means that the light-flash of the event traveled to you faster than the soundof it was able to travel.That's confirmed by some information from Physics, where we learn that light travelsabout 800 thousand times faster through air than sound does.


Why do you see the flash of lightning before heaving the thunder?

Light travels through air about 873,000 times as fast as sound does. If lightning strikes two kilometers away, it takes the light 6.67 microseconds to reach you (a microsecond is a millionth of a second), but it takes the sound 5.83 seconds to reach you. You can use that difference to determine how far away a lightning strike is. If you start a stopwatch as soon as you see a lightning flash then stop it as soon as you hear the thunder, then divide the time in seconds by 2.91 km/s, the quotient is the distance of the lightning in kilometers (divide by 4.69 miles/s to get the distance of the lightning in miles).


Would you hear thunder or see lighting first?

Even though the lightning and thunder occur at roughly the same time, you would see a distant strike before you would hear it, because the light travels to you about 882 thousand times as fast as the sound does.

Related Questions

Why do we see lightning first and then followed by thunder?

Lightning and thunder are phenomena that happen simultaneously but are observed at different times due to the difference in speed of light and sound. Light travels faster than sound, so we see the lightning flash first and then hear the thunder that follows it later.


Why do sometimes hear thunder at about the same time you see flash of lightning but other times you hear thunder after the flash?

If you hear the thunder almost at the same time as the lightning flash - the storm is directly overhead. Usually - the sound of thunder arrives a few seconds after the lightning, because light travels much faster than sound.


Why does lightning cause thunder?

Lightning is an electric discharge from the cloud to ground (although you can have other types, such as cloud to cloud). When the lightning strikes it heats up the surrounding air so fast that it causes an explosion, which is heard as thunder.


What is the plural of thunder?

Thunder as a noun is a sound produced by lightning, so it normally has no plural form. Occurrences at two separate times or places would remain "thunder."


Does lightning occur in the same or different place?

Lightning does occur in different places, but many more times then 2!


How fast the thunder come after lighting per second?

The thunder always comes after the flash. Depending on how far away the lightning hit, the thunder will reach you after different times. The sound travels at roughly 340,20 m/s, so an easy-to-remember rule is that if there's a flash and you count to three seconds, it is roughly 1 km away.


You had a dream and it involves lighting and thunder storms sometimes within the dream some person is chasing you with a knife what does this mean?

The lightning and thunder storms are the problems that you have to deal with in your real life. At different times, different issues may be symbolized by similar images of lightning and storms in your dreams. Similarly, the person chasing you represents a threatening or scary issue that you are trying to avoid or "run from." That aspect of the dream is likely to recur until you confront the issue and resolve it.


What are facts about thunder?

Florida has the the highest lightning strike density in the USA. There are about 8 million lightning strikes around the world each day. The odds of being struck by lightning in your life are 5000 to 1. The earth is struck by lightning 100 times each second.


What do lightning and thunder do in a storm?

The lightning is electromagnetic waves that travel through the clouds. when these waves meet with with another set of its kind they create a lightning bolt of some shape. The thunder ia like a sonic boom but not quite. Thunder is made by when the eletromagnetic waves have touched. They sort of crash in to each other. In that case creating lightning and to the following the thunder!!


What is a storm symptom one million times slower than lightning?

A slow-moving storm symptom that occurs one million times slower than lightning could be the formation of a cloud. Clouds can take hours to develop, while lightning is a quick discharge of electricity that happens in an instant.


What is the result of rapid heating of air around a lightning bolt?

The temperature of lightning can be around 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit; that's about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. The heat causes surrounding air to rapidly expand and vibrate, which creates the sound of thunder.


Why thunder sound the way it is?

AnswerDepends on where it is heard. In the barren desert with no mountain ranges, it will simply go "boom" and is gone. When surrounded by mountain ranges, the sound echoes off those hard surfaces and heads toward another. It then sounds much fiercer ... so it all depends where it is heard. Also, sound waves travel with slightly different velocities in air depending on their frequency. Higher frequencies travel faster than lower frequencies. Lightning makes sound over a wide range of frequencies, so the higher pitches get to you first. This is why thunder will crack first (high frequency) and then rumble later (low frequencies). It is also why the time-length of the thunder can be used to determine how far away the lightning was. The farther away the lightning, the more spread out the higher frequencies are from the lower frequencies.