Thursday, August 30, 2007

Thunder and lightning

Lightning over Oradea in Romania (Wikipedia)

I guess its common knowledge that we see the lighting first and hear the thunder later cos, duh, light travels faster than sound. But do thunder and lightning always occur together? Well, surprisingly enough I had never given it much thought. And since I have often heard thunder and not seen the lightning and vice-versa, there was never a reason to think there was a relation.

Turns out thunder is the sound CAUSED BY lightning. When a bolt of lightning hits, it results in a shock wave caused by the very rapidly thermal expansion of air - creating the sound that we know as thunder. Nice!

Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder

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