Lightning

📖 In short

Lightning is a giant electric spark that flashes in the sky during storms. Most happens inside clouds or between them, and some strikes the ground. It's very powerful and very hot, lighting up the sky for an instant and then vanishing.

🤩 Did you know?

Lightning strikes the ground about 100 times a second around the world.
Lightning heats the air to more than 30000 degrees.
Most lightning happens inside clouds, not between clouds and the ground.
Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Electricity in the clouds

Inside a thundercloud, bits of ice and water bump together and electric charges build up: positive at the top and negative at the bottom. When the charges get very big, a huge spark jumps across: lightning.

🔍 Hotter than the Sun

Lightning heats the air in its path to several times hotter than the Sun's surface, so the air suddenly expands and makes the sound of thunder.

💡 It likes high places

Lightning often strikes tall things like trees, towers and big buildings. That's why tall buildings have lightning rods, metal rods that carry the electricity safely into the ground.