Answer to Question #100732 in Optics for Hannah

Question

A lightning flash dissipates an enormous amount of energy and is essentially instantaneous. How is the energy transformed into the sound waves of thunder?

Answer 1

Thunder is caused by lightning, which is essentially a stream of electrons flowing between or within clouds, or between a cloud and the ground. The air surrounding the electron stream is heated to as hot as 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is three times hotter than the surface of the sun. As the super-heated air cools it produces a resonating tube of partial vacuum surrounding the lightning's path. The nearby air rapidly expands and contracts. This causes the column to vibrate like a tubular drum head and produces a tremendous crack. As the vibrations gradually die out, the sound echoes and reverberates, generating the rumbling we call thunder. We can hear the thundering booms 10 miles or more distant from the lightning that caused it.