As discussed in Chapter 18, lightning is one of nature’s most impressive displays. For a typical storm, a lightning bolt is generated when the average electric fi eld is about 10% of the breakdown fi eld for air. Consider a case in which the bottom of the storm cloud is 500 m above the Earth’s surface and the cloud has an area of 200 x 200 m². At the moment of a lightning strike, determine
(a) the potential difference between the cloud and the Earth’s surface and
(b) the total charge accumulated on the bottom of the cloud.
(c) Estimate the current in the lightning strike. Assume the current flows for 0.1 ms.