Jun 13 2007
The Origins of Lightnings
Lightnings are phenomena of electrical discharge that happen whenever a great potential difference occurs between clouds, parts of a cloud, or between a cloud and the earth. If the discharge occurs between a cloud and the earth’s surface, the cloud possesses a negative charge, the soil underneath positive.
What mechanism gives rise to such big potential difference, and what other phenomenon is produced by it besides lightnings?
During storms, strong currents of warm and humid air ascend with velocities that can reach one hundred kilometers per hour (a few months ago in Australia a paraglider was unwillingly pulled about 10,000 meters above sea level by such a current)…
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4 Responses to “The Origins of Lightnings”
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Is “lightnings” the correct scientific term, or is the writer a non-native English speaker? I love to annoy people by using the correct-but-obscure term for things, so I do hope I’ve found another one! BTW your blogroll has some great sites. That utterwonder guy is a hoot.
As far as I know, lightnings is just the plural of lightning. And mean metas aren’t allowed to post on this site, only nice ones.
It’s a known fact that the web is full of mean persons that write mean things.
Regarding Meanmeta, the author of the first comment above, he wants to show that he’s smart by telling that the writer of The origin of lightnings is “a non-native English speaker”. However, the appellative he gave me (“utterwonder”) shows that he possibly read the whole series of twelve posts I wrote in the web, and hence was able to get my complete name, email address and nationality (just search and you’ll find them). So, it seems that he just read what he pretended to infer.
Since my posts deal with physical arguments, one expects the comments to be of physical nature. Meanmeta didn’t do that, which means that either he isn’t a physicist, or isn’t a good one, otherwise he would have made a good, critical and constructive comment.
Instead he preferred to put forward a mean comment, while hiding behind a mean nickname.
The web would be a much better place if such persons just stayed quiet.
[Response: I linked to your post because I thought it was good. A curious meanmeta then asked if "lightnings" was the proper term to use or if it could be because the writer was a non-native English speaker - perhaps because meanmeta has extensive dealings with non-Native English speakers and knows that sometimes grammatical error can creap in. There was no malice intent in the comment, just an attempt to learn the correct grammar with regards to lightning.
Firstly, meanmeta could be female. To assume that anonymous person that posts on the web as male is sexist. Secondly, I'm almost sure "utterwonder" refers to Utterwonder.com a site that was linked from one of the sites that was previously in my "shared blogroll". Thirdly, the mean in meanmeta does not mean that meanmeta is mean, nor does it mean the comment was mean - it wasn't. Fourthly, meanmeta may be anonymous to you, but is not to me. Meanmeta probably knows that my blog get very few visitors each day, and that any comments would likely only be seen by me. It is unfortunate that meanmeta's comment was misinterpreted.]
Goodness! What a (lightning-)storm in a teacup.
My unreserved apologies to the unintentionally offended Diego Trevisan, of whom I have never heard, and to whom I have certainly never referred. My comments were interpreted entirely correctly by the owner of this blog.