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Electricity in nature
Electricity is a fundamental force of nature. Without it, our
world would not exist at all. After all, the atoms and mole-
cules out of which all the world’s materials are composed are
held together by electrical forces. Without electricity, there
would be no stars or planets, no rocks, no living creatures.
Even electrons, those particles that make up electrical cur-
rent, can be found everywhere in nature:
All atoms are made of tiny nuclei around which electrons
(usually a lot of them) are orbiting.
Lightning
Lightning bolts are probably the showiest electrical phenom-
ena in nature. Inside a thundercloud, there are areas with a
huge excess of electrons, and other areas where there are too
few. So, just like between the poles of a battery, there exists
electrical tension, or voltage, between these areas. In a thun-
dercloud, though, the voltage doesn’t amount to just a few
volts. Often, it will be over 100 million volts. So it discharges
itself over and over again in the form of lightning bolts, which
are the means by which the excess electrons leave the cloud.
In the process, the air along the lightning channel gets heated
explosively — to around 300,000 degrees Celsius, or six times
hotter than the surface of the sun! That’s what produces the
rolling thunder that accompanies the lightning flash.
Содержание Electricity and Magnetism 620417
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