Almost all of us have watched with admiration the majestic fall of electric waves from the sky to the earth while looking into the distance in rainy and stormy weather. It has always come to our minds while watching: Why don’t these lightning strikes fall straight?
A scientist named John Lowke thought about this subject and started doing research. There really is a reason why lightning strikes in a zigzag pattern. Let’s talk about the secret of this natural phenomenon, which happens 8.6 million times every day in the world.
While lightning strikes the earth, they go through a very difficult process in a very short time:
Intense electric fields in lightning clouds activate electrons so that they have enough energy to form molecules called “single delta oxygen molecules.” These molecules and electrons accumulate to form a short, highly conductive narrow path that burns intensely in a millionth of a second.
Each accumulation creates a certain length of path for electricity to discharge from the cloud, which is directly proportional to its energy. When this path is finished, a new path is opened from this node so that the electricity from the source can continue.
This process continues until the lightning reaches a point on the earth, and thus we see zigzag lightning, not straight.
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