Atmospheric Waves from Electrical Discharge
The process described involves a rapid heating of the conducting air channel by an electrical discharge, such as lightning. This intense heating causes the air to expand very quickly.
This rapid expansion creates a sudden increase in pressure, generating a disturbance that propagates outwards. These pressure disturbances traveling through the air are known as sound waves. The audible phenomenon associated with these waves from lightning is thunder.
Wave Type Identification
- Sound waves are mechanical waves caused by vibrations and propagating through a medium like air via pressure variations. The rapid expansion of heated air fits this definition.
- Inertia-gravity waves, seismic waves, and Rossby waves are types of waves associated with different physical phenomena (stratified fluids, Earth's interior, and large-scale atmospheric/oceanic rotation, respectively) and are not generated by the rapid heating and expansion of air from electrical discharge.
Therefore, the shock waves that spread are sound waves.
Similar Questions
- Fair weather electrical field near the Earth's surface is typically about
Important Questions from Atmospheric Electricity
- Thunder storm electrification occurs efficiently in clouds that are composed
The sequence of events in a cloud to ground electrical discharge is
The above cartoon exhibits a cloud during the mature stage of development of a simple convective thunderstorm. The simplest charge structure sequence in boxes. A, B, C, respectively, can be depicted as follows. Positive charges are shown as +++ and negative charges ---
- In the global electrical circuit, the negative charge on the Earth is maintained predominantly by
- The upper part of a thunderstorm cloud is normally — charged, and the middle and lower parts are — charged
