十万个为什么·科学启蒙30篇（2）
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What Causes Thunder and Lightning?
雷声和闪电是如何产生的？
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Lightning occurs when massive static electricity builds up inside storm clouds due to collisions between ice particles and water droplets.
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When the electrical difference between cloud and ground—or between two clouds—becomes too great, a sudden discharge happens.
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This discharge heats the surrounding air to over 30,000°C, causing it to expand explosively and create a shock wave we hear as thunder.
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Because light travels much faster than sound, we always see lightning before hearing thunder — roughly 1 second per 340 meters.
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A single lightning bolt can carry over one billion volts of electricity and last just 30 microseconds.
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Although lightning looks like a single flash, it often consists of several rapid strokes traveling along the same path.
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Thunder cannot occur without lightning, but sometimes distant lightning is too far to see — we call this 'heat lightning'.
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Wearing rubber-soled shoes won’t protect you from lightning, since voltage overwhelms such small insulation.