Positive Lightning?

Electrons are a thousand times lighter than even the lightest ion (H+), so carry 99.9% of the electric current, NO MATTER THE DIRECTION.

A positive charge is merely an absence of negative charge.

So go ahead and read a damn book, this is in any physics text dealing with electricity.

Tim

So, IOW, the absence of an electron. Thats a bit confusing.

In positive lightning, positive charges take the place of electrons. What are these positive charges? You say they are "absence of negative charges". I am stumped here.

Hi again, radium. In any matter with no net charge, positive charge and negative charge balance out. If there's more electrons than protons, there's a net negative charge. If there are fewer electrons than protons, you have a net positive charge.

Again, this is sci.*.*. It's kind of assumed you'll make an effort here.

If the charge business is still confusing, most eighth grade science textbooks will have a good basic explanation in the electicity section

-- it's usually toward the back of the book.

Cheers Chris

sounds like bullshit to me.

Bye. Jasen

Positive ions are atoms (or groups of atoms) with too-few electrons to balance the charge of the protons in the nucleus.

the air is roughly 4/5 nitrogen so expect a high proportion of nitrogen ions.

This isn't something you read on keeleynet is it? Those guys do an immitation of science.

Bye. Jasen

Positive lightning is when the cloud is positive with respect to ground, where negative or ordinary lightning has the cloud negative wrt ground. So in both cases, there are a positive and negative side, and the charge movement is still in the form of electrons. The streamers that initiate the strike, which I take it are lines of ionized air reaching for the opposite polarity, will be negative or positive at cloud and ground depending on the type of lightning. A positive streamer probably consists of ionized air that has a deficiency of electrons, because the electrons were sucked away by the electric field. There would have to be positive ions in that streamer, but they wouldn't move very much, because their mass is thousands of times greater than that of electrons (1800 for a single proton; so for an oxygen atom, for example, 30,000 times greater). With an electric field, and an electron with one negative charge and an atom with one positive charge that is 30,000 times heavier, the movement will be similarly divided. The answer to what is in the positively charge streamer is just whatever atoms make up air, but ionized by the loss of electrons. But the positive ions don't move much and the charge transfer is by electrons.

I googled an interesting article about positive and bipolar lightning:

-- John

Thanks for clearing my confusion.

And there's the low-power-factor kind, imaginary lightning.

John

Since at least most of the assertions in the above are incorrect, your questions are completely meaningless.

Bob M.

It would appear that the storms that have +ve strikes occur with the huge cells that produce megalightning. And this has been associated with the upper atmosphere radiation layer, the ionosphere.

Perhaps it isn't hydrogen that is involved directly.

But there is a lot of it around.

I doubt there are many primers that discuss positively charged strikes, so you can safely ignore the idiots who try to tear strips off you. They will fall over their own arses sooner rather than later.

Positive lighting means that free-electrons are moving from the earth to clouds. So do not worry about chemicals.

Steve

nope, thats not true. Electronics tend to just be the easiest method to use as energy transfer.

You can have neutron flow, proton flow, ionic flow, and probably even others. Plamsa can also conduct I'd imagine its due to both electronic and ionic reasons.

hmm... so is a negative charge the absence of positive charge?

Not true. I have many physics books I would wager that not all of them(or even half) deal with this specific subject. I do have a book that deals specifically with netron flow and using it for energy transfer. Ofcours ethe problem with these things is they are not easy to use. Electrons ar ethe easiest because we can guide them with wires.

How do you make neutron flow?

Tell me how there is a net movement of charge when you shift neutrons about. I could do with a laugh.

Tim

For lightning: Electrons up and/or down, they cause plasma, but that plasma certainly does not "flow" in any useful way, its just formed, and then dissipates,while creating the big thunderclap.

It seems to me there could be a whole mess of complicated dynamics around the matter which neutron stars are made of: convection, gravitational and strong-force interactions at least; but an electrical current, i.e., movement of electric charge, obviously not.

Tim