Essay - Lightning - Dramatic Electrostatics When People are Asked to Name...

Lightning - Dramatic Electrostatics

When people are asked to name a force of nature, far more will refer to the force of gravity than to the electrostatic force. True, the force of gravity works over much larger distances than does the electrostatic force, but the fact that matter exists at all is directly due to the electrostatic force itself. Without it, electrons would not orbit the nucleus ***** an atom and chemical compounds would be impossible. Water exists solely ***** to the electrostatic attraction between hydrogen and oxygen *****s, similarly for every o*****r ***** compound in the universe. Without the electrostatic *****, ***** ***** ***** exist (if at all) as only an undifferenti*****ed swarm of subatomic particles whose *****teractions would be entirely r*****dom.

*****, all it takes is a stumble on rocky ground to convince one of the power of grav*****y, whereas electrostatic phenomena are usually far less dramatic - a shock gotten from touching a doorknob in winter, for instance.

***** phenomena have been ***** subject ***** human curiosity and comment ***** ages. The ever-observant ancient Greeks knew that under certain circumstances, pieces of amber could influence small ***** of fabric or dust. But it was Franklin's 18th century efforts to understand electric*****y that should be considered the birth of real scientific inquiry into the field of electrostatics, because it was Franklin who first seems to have identified ***** positive/negative nature ***** electricity and ***** invented the lightning rod, after rightly understanding what it ***** about rooftops and church steeples that lightning seemed to favor (Jefimenko, 1973).

Although lightning can even strike on a sunny day (Wikipedia, 2005), most terrestrial lightning ***** generated through two interactive processes: triboelectricity and electrostatic induction.

The triboelectric effect is ***** tendency of objects of dissimilar materials to accumulate electric charges when put in contact with each other ***** depends on the relative tendency of these materials ***** either accumulate or give up electrons (though ***** identical materials will tend to develop small differences ***** charge if rubbed together). Materials' relative ***** to do this has been plotted on ***** is called the Tribo***** Series (Noon, 1992). Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) tends to ***** electrons and so is toward ***** end of the series, while glass tends to give up ***** and is positioned toward the ***** end. If glass and PVC are brought into contact ***** each other, the PVC will become negatively charged ***** the glass positively *****. This is the basis of many electrostatic generators, such as the Van de Graaff generator.

In a thunder cloud, ***** two dissimil*****r ***** are ice and liquid water. Most thunder*****s' bottoms are at about 5km above Earth's surface, where it is usually sufficiently cold to freeze any liquid water. Powerful winds circulate up and down the interior of a thunders*****rm, be*****ring up small drops of freezing ***** which collide with descending hail stones. Even though ***** two ***** are made ***** water, the fact that one ***** large and solidly frozen while one is small