Lightening

There is an abundant amount of potential energy associated with electricity. Electric field lines describe the direction and behavior of an objects charge. A visual way to understand this is imagining a machine constantly blowing out confetti in <---- direction and a vacuum sucking in air in -----> direction(imagine no gravitational force). The confetti will constantly will be entering the vacuum creating a field of confetti around both objects. This field of confetti is similar to magnetic field lines, and the positively charged object is the confetti blower and the negatively charged object is the vacuum. The following black lines with arrows are electric field lines of two oppositely charged objects.


Potential energy in electricity is imagined by placing a charge(d1 -) from infinity to another charge(P -). As charge d1 which is negative is brought from infinite closer to P which is also negative, work must be done in order to continuously bring this charge closer or even hold the charge at a certain point in the vicinity of the electric field of P. Therefore, wherever there is work there also must be potential energy. The potential difference is what we see everyday in our homes and it is described by the units of Volts or Joules/Coulomb. It is the energy required to move a charge to a particular place in a static electric field.

Creating this potential difference for uses of other energy is the challenge we face in 2010. We indirectly use techniques like burning fossil fuels, and harvesting wind and solar energy. What ever happened to using lightening as a means of energy?

Storm clouds are arranged like giant capacitors in the sky; the upper cloud being positively charged and the lower cloud being negatively charged. Due to large masses of clouds with opposite charge, an electric field of large proportion is produced. This electric field is so enormous that the lower negatively charged clouds cause the earth's electrons in its ground to move away and become positively charged at the surface(Earth contains charge). When the electric field is strong(tens of thousands of volts per inch), the molecules(air) between the clouds becomes ionized or separated into positive ions and electrons. This means that electrons can move more freely than they previously could before when the air was not ionized. The immensely complex electric fields of the two clouds cause the ionized air(plasma) to create step leaders or ionized air to create paths through the sky and into the ground. Objects on the Earth's surface, or the Earth's surface itself become attracted to the ionized air which causes an eventual meeting between the two. After the two meet, current flows from the ionized air into the Earth, and a discharge of current is exploited to neutralized the charge separation. The enormous amount of current in that flows in the charge separation causes the flash of light. The thunder is caused by the flash(which is hotter than the sun) exploding the air.


One lamp consumes 150 volts, while there is 100 million volts of potential difference in lightening. There are 16 million recorded lightening storms in the world every year. If we could harvest this energy for domestic use you could do the math on how much we could save.