As it is a very powerful natural phenomenon, lightning reaches very high values when it comes to several of its physical properties, including the charged electric current, its voltage and its temperature.
Have you ever thought about how many volts lightning has? And what is the electric current of lightning? Find out in this article!
What is the voltage of lightning?
Lightning typically has around 100 million volts, but this value can be as high as a billion. This happens because air is not a good conductor of electricity; therefore, a very high electrical voltage must arise between the clouds and the ground.
This high value is reached by the gradual accumulation of positive electrical charges in the cloud and the consequent concentration of negative charges on the ground. Once the voltage is great enough to break through the resistance that air offers — its dielectric strength — lightning can happen.
What is Voltage?
Despite being a measure that appears frequently in everyday life — in the values of 110 and 220 V in outlets, for example — do you know what a volt means? Voltage is a popular name for electrical voltage, a measure that indicates the difference in electrical potential between two points. It refers to how much energy the system is capable of carrying.
To understand the concept, it is possible to compare the tension to a road: doubling the number of lanes, twice as many vehicles, with the same speed, could travel on it. By doubling the voltage, twice as much energy can be carried by the same electric current.
The name of the unit, volt, was chosen in honor of the Italian scientist Alessandro Volta, known as the inventor of the electric battery.
What is the electric current from lightning?
Calculations show that the electrical current from lightning is typically in the range of 5 to 30 thousand amperes, but currents of up to 200,000 A have been reported. Approximately 100 quintillion — 100 billion billion — of electrons are moved during these electrical discharges and the temperature they reach can reach 8,000 to 30,000 ºC.
Difference between voltage and current
Electric current refers to the orderly movement of electrons through a material. Even if a material has free electrons, without this one-way shift, there is no electric charge flowing through the material.
When a voltage is applied between two points, as is done in the two holes of a socket – or in the case of lightning, between the clouds and the ground – the electrons start to move from the negative pole to the positive pole. Electric current is measured in amperes, a unit named after the French physicist André-Marie Ampère.
