Monday March 30, 2020

volcanic lightning

When hot, molten rock pushes its way up through the Earth's crust and exits through to the surface, it often results in a volcanic eruption.

These eruptions sometimes occur via slow and steady flows, but often show themselves in huge bursts of activity.



When this latter case happens, a large amount of ash, dust, rock, volatile gases, and lava all are expelled in a very short period of time.

While we might think of these as the major features of a volcano, there's often a magnificent visual sight that accompanies these: volcanic lightning.

Although not every eruption will produce this stunning light show, it's been observed and recorded by humans for countless generations. Now, with our advanced understanding of physics and the physical sciences, we finally understand how it's produced.

Pockets of magma exist deep within the Earth’s mantle, originating as deep as the Earth's liquid outer core, but are also created from the crust sliding over the top of the mantle. Either way, when liquid rock, heated to thousands of degrees, makes its way upwards to the crust, it can erupt through to the surface at a few select weak points. When this happens, not only does lava emerge, but is often accompanied by large amounts of soot and ash. And occasionally, if the recipe is just right, lightning as well.



Each lightning strike is the exchange of some  100,000,000,000,000,000,000 charged particles.

You may be used to atoms being neutral, with equal numbers of electrons as there are protons in their nuclei. At the temperatures that volcanoes achieve

the heat and friction make it surprisingly easy for atoms to gain or lose electrons, transforming them into ions.

 We certainly don’t need to go these extremes to find ions; something as simple as rubbing a balloon   against your hair is an example of transferring electrons and creating ions.

Now, if you can separate these ions from one another, you create a separation of charge,

which creates a voltage.



 When the voltage between two regions becomes too great — even if air is the only thing between them — it spontaneously becomes conductive, creating a breakdown of the material between these distant regions.



There is an exchange of charge that happens extremely rapidly, and that's what you see as a lightning strike!



The hotter a volcano is and the more violent the eruption, the greater the likelihood of seeing volcanic lightning.

All told, there have been more than 150 different eruptions over the past couple of centuries where volcanic lightning has been recorded.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the crust?


2. What is the difference between magma?

3.  What causes volcanic lightning?

4. Write a story using volcanic lightning phenomenon  (minimum  5 sentences)