Lightning in slow motion

[mendhak]

It's nice.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2...lery-lightning

There are 6 videos, btw. And what an awesome camera it must be - 54K frames per second.

[JuggaloBrotha]

I cant really see it, the flash player is really janky it'll sit there loading, then play really fast to the half way point and sit there loading again then play really fast to the end. When I click pause it pauses then I click play and it sits there loading doing the same as above. Are these on YouTube? YouTube always works.

[honeybee]

As an aside, you now get 120fps video capture in mobile phone cameras

[link]http://www.gizmag.com/lg-viewty-mobile-phone-120-fps-video/8405/[/link]

Amazing work there (I mean the lightening videos).

.

[NickThissen]

That's odd. I've always learned that, contrary to popular believe, lightning actually strikes 'upwards' (from the ground up to the sky). But in the video you can clearly see the charge coming down...?
I clicked a different video (the one with the rod) and it shows both a downwards and upwards strike simultaneously.

[mendhak]

That's one of those out-of-context facts that they teach you. We normally think it travels down. But they tell you "Hey did you know it actually travels upwards? I'm so smart because I knew that." The actual context is that it does both.

In the videos, you saw the feelers creeping downwards (they're called step ladders or something similar). They're negative. As it approaches, the positive charge on the earth's surface jumps up and you get the lightning as it jumps up.

[NickThissen]

I know there are 'feelers' (think they're called leaders or something though) both downwards and upwards, but those are invisible, aren't they? Now I'm confused lol. I thought the positive feeler (from the ground) went up to the sky (nearly to the cloud itself) until finally connecting with the negative (shorter) feeler. Only then does a current run, heating up the air (possibly to a plasma), and making it visible. Perhaps both ways can happen, I dunno...

[mendhak]

Invisible? Too fast for us to see maybe. But the opposite does happen; Positive lightning is when the positive charge is up top at the cloud and the lightning's in the opposite direction. I'm pretty sure there are other types of lightning. I've heard of sprites that happen way up above but they don't travel to the ground.

[JuggaloBrotha]

The 'feelers' is just the ionization of the particles in the air, like a particle wire for the charges to travel on

[honeybee]

Invisible? Too fast for us to see maybe. But the opposite does happen; Positive lightning is when the positive charge is up top at the cloud and the lightning's in the opposite direction. I'm pretty sure there are other types of lightning. I've heard of sprites that happen way up above but they don't travel to the ground.

Sometimes they happen way up above amongst the clouds, not reaching downwards at all, sometimes they seem to be shooting upwards from the ground and sometimes they travel downwards to the ground. I have seen all these during monsoons.

.

[MartinLiss]

It's nice.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2...lery-lightning

There are 6 videos, btw. And what an awesome camera it must be - 54K frames per second.

Nice.

[MartinLiss]

Oh and not that it really matters but all but one of them was filmed at 7200 fps with the exception at 1000fps.

[kleinma]

It says in the descriptions it was 7,200 images/sec. Where is the 54k version???

[mendhak]

It was so slow, they had to take it off the site No, the camera seems to be capable of going up to 54K/s. He's too cheap to make a video for us at that speed though.

[wossname]

awsum captchaz lulz!!!!111shiftthreee

[DeanMc]

Orsum! WOW!