• Question: What causes thunder?

    Asked by wario5000 to Aime, Akshat, Diana, Gemma, Judith on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Akshat Rathi

      Akshat Rathi answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder#Cause

    • Photo: Judith McCann

      Judith McCann answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Basically when lightning happens it increases the pressure and temperature (upto 30,000 °C) in a very specific place (the path of lightning to the ground) this makes the air in this area expand really fast which starts a sonic shockwave-basically a sound wave starts and travels to where you are, which is how you can figure out how far away the lightning is striking compared to where you are by the time between the light and the sound (since lightwaves travel so much faster than sound waves)

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