BCP 101 EL: v3 (First Timers)

LIGHTNING: Lightning bolts can look like they are 5 or 10 feet wide, but they are actually surprisingly thin–only about one foot wide. The bolts appear to be wide because they are so bright that they blast the area around them with light.

LIGHTNING: One negative lightning bolt may be 100 million volts!

LIGHTNING: Positive lightning bolts which form at the top of clouds, however, are the granddaddies of them all. They can reach an astonishing 1 billion volts!

LIGHTNING: Have you ever seen a lightning bolt but not heard its thunder? It’s because thunder typically dissipates in less than two miles because traveling through air molecules dampens its sound.

LIGHTNING: Thunder happens because temperatures in the path of a lightning bolt reach 90,000ºF instantaneously. The noise of thunder is caused by the lightning superheating air molecules which causes them to explode outward. This creates the thunder.

LIGHTNING: If lighting is silent and has no thunder, the lightning was further away than 22 miles.

SPEED OF ELECTRICITY: Electricity travels through metals like copper more easily than plastic because electrons are knocked away from atoms more easily in metals than in plastics.

SPEED OF ELECTRICITY: Electrons move slowly like a line of people walking slowly who are holding hands.

SPEED OF ELECTRICITY: Electrons send a pulse through each other at a very slow speed.

SPEED OF ELECTRICITY:  The actual speed of electrons is slow, maybe as slow as a snail moves.