Saturday 16 April 2011

Flash Facts About Lightning

This week:
The news-world is still boring. I could do with changing that tag up top from "news-inspired". I was flicking through the TV, and saw The Day After Tomorrow came on. This made me think of the potential power of nature, but that's too vague, and so we have:


Lightning




1/. Lightning is a massive discharge of electricity.
The bolt can be over 5 miles in length, contains 100,000,000 volts and heats the air to over 27,700 degrees Celsius (Tantalum hafnium carbide, one of the hardest compounds known, and the one with the highest melting point melts at 4215 degrees Celsius).


2/. The odds of becoming a lightning victim in the U.S. in any one year is 1 in 700,000. The odds of being struck in your lifetime is 1 in 3,000.


3/. Most people hurt by lightning while inside their homes are talking on the telephone at the time.


4/. Lightning can be formed in the top or bottom section of the storm. Lightning formed in the positive top section can strike upto 10 miles away, often in an area of clear skies.


These points really don't help with paranoia.


PS: I have a confession. This post is primarily sourced from National Geographic. The news article is concise, interesting, and in virtually the same format as I aim for, so it was hard to resist. I even stole their punny title. Forgive me, blogosphere.

9 comments:

  1. And although it's dangerous, it looks really cool

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  2. Man I always have the slight feeling in gonna be hit whenever I go out in a storm lol. I should blog in a similar format when I don't feel like doing news lol. Nice post.

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  3. Interesting post, you should have let us credit you for the title!

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  4. I had no idea they could be all different colors. The picture looks almost too good to be real!

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  5. Nice to know, i was just discussing what lightening was with my friends the other day.

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  6. What about the ground-to-cloud lightning? That would be a neat little addition to add to this post.

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  7. Lightening is so fascinating...

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