I
captured video footage of a lightning strike when I was enrolled in an
advanced
image processing workshop offered by the Center for Image Processing in
Education.
Standing outside our hotel in Mesa, Arizona, we pointed a Hi-8 video
camera
toward the horizon where a lightning storm was taking place.
View
a Quicktime movie of the lightning stack by clicking on the image
above.
These 18 images were captured at 30 frames per second, so the event you
are
viewing took 0.6 seconds.
Download the lightning stack
and view it using the public domain software program Image J. Using
this
software you can manipulate, resize, and measure the stack. There is
also
a READ ME file associated with this stack of
images that you may download.
More about
Lightning
The Franklin
Institute Lightning Site
An excellent explanation of just how lightning happens--as a flow of
oppositely
charged particles. Written in language clear enough for upper
elementary
students to understand, the Lightning Science link begins:
Opposites attract. That's lightning.
Lightning
really is as simple as that. In and around a thunderstorm cloud there
are
areas of positively charged energy and areas of negatively charged
energy.
When the oppositely charged areas are near each other, an electrical
discharge
of energy travels between them. That's lightning.
The NASA thunder
and lightning site
A much more sophisticated site that explains current lightning
researach
underway at NASA. The Lightning Primer link is particularly useful for
teachers.
The West
Virginia Lightning site
A particularly good commercial site that explains in greater detail and
with
particularly good animations how lightning happens. This site's authors
emphasize
lightning as part of the wonder of God's creation, and include an
evangelistic
message--"The Point of it all."
The Kids Lightning Information and Safety page. This remains my
favorite
"student authored" website of all time. Sabrina is a girl who was
hit
by lightning during a family trip to the Grand Canyon. She used that
event
as the reason to create a webpage about lightning information and
safety.
She was about 8 when she was struck--she must be in middle school by
now,
and she has maintained this site through all these years. It has grown
as
she has...including her translation of the page into French!
