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Does lightning have electromagnetic energy?
Lightning is known to emit significant electromagnetic energy in the radio-frequency range from below 1 Hz to near 300 MHz, with a peak in the frequency spectrum near 5 to 10 kHz for lightning at distances beyond 50 km or so.
Is lightning an electromagnetic wave?
That’s because electricity generated by the phone makes radio waves that mess with the radio. Lightning, too, creates radio waves. Radio waves—just like light and heat—are part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It makes sense that lightning would generate them.
What type of electromagnetic wave is lightning?
Eventually a lightning bolt happens and the flow of electrons neutralizes the electric field. This flow of electrons through the lightning bolt creates a very hot plasma, as hot as 50,000 degrees, that emits a spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Some of this radiation is in the form of radio waves and gamma rays.
What happens when lightning flashes?
Lightning is extremely hot—a flash can heat the air around it to temperatures five times hotter than the sun’s surface. This heat causes surrounding air to rapidly expand and vibrate, which creates the pealing thunder we hear a short time after seeing a lightning flash.
Is lightning a visible light?
Lightning is visible as a flash of light because of both incandescence (due to its high temperature it glows blue-white) and luminescence (excitation of nitrogen gas in the atmosphere).
Does lightning create a magnetic field?
Lightning strikes are rapidly moving electric currents and the movement of electric charges produces a magnetic field. This is called electromagnetism. The electromagnetic properties of lightning are apparent in several ways.
Can you see lightning?
The answer is both. Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning comes from the sky down, but the part you see comes from the ground up. A typical cloud-to-ground flash lowers a path of negative electricity (that we cannot see) towards the ground in a series of spurts.
What is lightning flash called?
Cloud Flashes Most of these remain within the cloud and are called intra-cloud (IC) lightning flashes. Cloud flashes sometimes have visible channels that extend out into the air around the storm (cloud-to-air or CA), but do not strike the ground.