By Linda / Everett Public Library staff
Did you know that when lightning strikes, the air around it becomes five times hotter than the surface of the sun?
I found this information on page 79 of the book “501½ Horrible Facts.”
According to Isaac Asimov’s book “The Solar System: the Sun,” the temperature of the sun is about 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface and about 27,000,000 degrees at the center. This means that the air around a lightning strike would be about 55,000 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, there isn’t enough sunscreen on earth to make a trip to the sun possible! The sun is the nearest star to Earth. It takes light from the sun about eight minutes to get to Earth; from the next nearest star, light takes over four years to get here!
Cumulonimbus clouds are the thunderclouds we see before and during a lightning storm. They are huge masses of air, water and ice. Inside of these clouds, violent air currents cause ice crystals to smash into each other, causing static electricity. Ice crystals at the base of the cloud become negatively charged while the top of the cloud and the ground are positively charged. The difference becomes so great that electricity starts leaping back and forth in the cloud, causing sheet lightning, or between the cloud and the ground, causing fork lightning. I learned this and so much more about all kinds of weather events in the DK book “Weather.”
Thunder and lightning always remind me of Zeus, the sky-and-thunder god of ancient Greek religion, which makes me think of mythology! Check out one of our mythology books to read stories about gods and goddesses in Greek, Roman and Celtic mythology.
“Tap Tap Boom Boom” by Elizabeth Bluemle is a nice story about people escaping into a subway to avoid the thunder and lightning from a storm. People share smiles and umbrellas as they all wait out a storm together.
Be sure to visit the Everett Public Library blog for more reviews and news of all things happening at the library.
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