Sunday, May 12, 2013

We call lightning a process due to static charges, and say that it is discharge of static electricity. But, to my knowledge, static electricity is...

Static electricity is not necessarily due to friction. While you can see the effects of static electricity by using friction (for example, when you rub a balloon on your hair, the hair will stand up, or when you rub a Styrofoam cup on the wall, it will stick to the wall for a few seconds), the definition of static electricity is just that it involves stationary charges, as opposed to moving charges, such as in electric...

Static electricity is not necessarily due to friction. While you can see the effects of static electricity by using friction (for example, when you rub a balloon on your hair, the hair will stand up, or when you rub a Styrofoam cup on the wall, it will stick to the wall for a few seconds), the definition of static electricity is just that it involves stationary charges, as opposed to moving charges, such as in electric current. Friction is used to move some of the charges from one surface to another, which results in the attraction of the surfaces, as in the above example with the cup. However, it does not matter how the stationary charges are produced; any phenomenon involving them would be still called a static electricity phenomenon.


It is correct that the lightning is a discharge of static electricity. There are a number of processes that result in a storm cloud being statically charged. One of them is the high-speed collisions of the water droplets, due to which the electrons, which are negatively charged, separate from the atoms, which then become positively charged. The cloud then becomes polarized, as the positive charges end up on top and the negative charges on the bottom. Please see the reference link for a detailed description of various mechanisms of this process. Thus, the cloud then becomes a gigantic capacitor, and once the charges on the opposite sides become large enough, the electric discharge takes place. 

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