When lightning strikes a tree, what happens at that instant to the tree?
79531
The tree can suffer burns without catching on fire.  This has happened to many people.  For more on lightning read this:\nhttp://www.insuremyhouse.com/lightning.html
176989
electric charges go from ground to sky. The lightning is the effect (also the thunder) of such traveling charges.
400449
Thunder is the explosive sound produced by an ordinary lightning discharge. The lightning bolt heats the air around it so quickly (within a few millionths of a second) and to such a high temperature (about 10,000° C, or about 18,000° F) that the air molecules are pushed apart with great force, much like in an explosion. A wave of compressed air (a sound wave) moves out from the lightning bolt.
263764
1) Echoes are caused because the sound bounces off the surrounding landscape, just like ripples in a pond reflect back from the edge and start going back in the other direction.\n2) Sound comes later than the lightning because sound goes about 700 mph and light goes about 990,000 times faster than that.  So if the lightning is 1 mile away, the light gets to you in a fraction of a second and the thunder arrives after 5 seconds.
183433
Try:\nhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning.htm\nAlso:\nhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/question182.htm\nand\nhttp://science.howstuffworks.com/question646.htm
790168
Lightening (which causes the thunder) is caused by a static electrical charge build up inside very high clouds. The static build up is caused by the collision and rubbing of small ice particles way up in the clouds. If these particles get big enough they will fall down and depending on the temperature outside will either melt into rain, or could initiate crystal formation (snow).\n\nSo you see, there is nothing about whether its rain or snow that effects the mechanism of lightning generation. The reason that it is less common in the winter is that in order to produce the very high lightning generating clouds (anvil-topped cummilonimbus [sorry if spelt wrong!]) it requires very strong updrafts - This is more likely in the summer when the hot sun beating down heats air rapidly so it shoots up fast. But there are conditions in winter that can have the same effect (like collision between warm and cold fronts).
199333
It's part of the design. Don't worry about hitting by lightning where there are storms. Because lightning hit the highest peak of the terrain.\nI'll give you an example to clarify it. If you're walking in the rice field with your umbrella, you are likely to be hit because you are the highest peak compare to your surrounding. But if you're walking in a forest, you are not likely to be hit because there are trees much higher/taller than you.
46381
Well electricity needs a path to travel in. Electricity can flow in wires, or other conductors, like a plasma, which consists of charged particles; that is, the electrons have been stripped off the atoms because they are so energetic, leaving just a seething collection of positive and negative particles (said to be "ionized"). In a lightning strike, a path of charged particles extends between the cloud and the ground, or some other object near the ground like a tree or a lightning rod or building (or sometimes between one cloud and another). The electricity in lightning follows this charged path. \n\nIf you can use a powerful laser or some other technique to form an ionized path in the air, then electricity can follow that ionized path, just like it does in lightning (or in Van de Graff generator experiments).
1180080
A car's frame is made of metal.  If lightning strikes the car, the metal will conduct around you through the metal because metal is a better conductor than your body is.  Unsafe is electricity going through you.  Do not stand upright in a storm or even under a tree.  Also don't lay flat on the ground because if lightening strikes near you, the conduction through the ground may offer more resistence than your body and the electricity may take a shortcut through your body.  Best thing without a car is to squat down.
563550
5 seconds per mile is close enough to determine the distance of the closest part of the lightning strike.  Not all of the strike is the same distance away from you, so you hear a drawn out roll of thunder as the sound from all of the strike reaches you over a period of some seconds.
62656
When it hits something.
493265
Yes, it is possible for lightning to strike water.  It happens all the time.  Lightning is the result of a difference in potential between two bodies.  When the potential is great enough, electricity jumps from the negatively charged body to the positively charged body.  The two bodies can be a cloud and a tree, a cloud and the ground or a cloud and water or from one cloud to another.  Therefore, lightning can be cloud to ground, cloud to cloud or even within a cloud.  What happens when the lightening bolt strikes the water is that at the immediate point of the strike, the temperature of the water instantly reaches the boiling point.  Given the extreme temperature of a lightning bolt and the extreme charge, I would suspect that not only is steam formed but a plasma is also likely formed at the immediate point of the strike.  As to what happens to any biological life at the point of the strike, it would depend on how near they are to the strike.  The closer they are to it, the more likely that they could be killed by the sudden change in temperature and potential.
1077150
Thunderstorms are an occurrence of high pressure and low pressure. When the two zone converge they create ionization of the atmosphere, that is an electrical charge one is positive and the other negative, with the ground being ground. As the two systems get closer to each other, the disruption in the atmosphere caused the discharge of positive electrons across the pressure zones creating a static discharge in the form of lightening, most of the time the lightening strikes from positive to negative between the clouds, however many times the discharge is so massive it goes to ground. Thunder is the sound the lightening makes as it breaks the sound barrier of approximately 720 mile per hour when flashing between positive and negative poles.
87627
lighting bolts are very much jagged. Actually its composed of a number of straight lines. \n\nLighting is a spark between two clouds/ a cloud and the gound.This has to go through air (insulator). The conductivities of air are dissimilar at differnet places. So, the lightning goes through different layers of air through different paths. The discharge will take place between two points which has highest charge density. These points in air are not present in a staight line. Thus following these points lightning becomes jagged.
571899
Lightening always takes the quickest path to ground. Water is conductive so if water is the closest conductive thing to ground from the point of origination then it well conduct electricity down to ground.
554275
Lightning is nothing but charge travelling from a place of high potential to one of lower potential. So its a bunch of  ions (it could be positive/negative ions ) in there, colliding against the air molecules as they try and make their way from one place to the other. The collisions are what give rise to the light. \n\nBe that as it may, the travel of ions is a very random process. They will normally try and take the shortest route through, and if it werent for density fluctuations in the air, you would see a straight line. \n\nThe zigzagging comes about when the ion group is pushed about randomly by the air, as it tries to find the easiest way through, which doesn't work out to be the shortest one. Hence, the bolt itself takes the most natural form that it can, in the face of unforeseen hurdles - a zigzag shape!
1174036
Lightning and thunder actually occured the same time. Only light travels faster than sound, so we see lightning before hear thunder.\n\nLightning is actually negative charges (electron) which jump to positive charges. How this charges formed?, Well, simply by the cloud moving in the sky.\n\nCloud 'rub' against air particle and positive and negative charges formed. Negative charges tend to appear at the botom or cloud while positive charges tend to appear at the top.\n\nWhen two clouds collide, the negative charges 'jump' to the positive charges (massively). This produces light and sound,, like normal spark, (only its a giant spark in the sky),\n\nSometimes lightning is dangerous becoz some positie charges 'dropped' to the ground, and the eloctron jumps to the ground, (a human standing there will be Bad Luck)