Why does lightning do not follow a straight line but divide many branches?

is a familiar phenomenon in every thunderstorm. But why doesn't lightning move in a straight line, but divides into many branches on the way to the ground?

Find the best way that goes

Why does lightning look like a tree with many branches?- (Photo: National Geographic).

According to Science ABC, in thunderstorms, clouds are usually negatively charged, while the ground due to induction should have a positive charge.

The positive charge of the ground will have a higher density in taller and sharper shapes such as tree tops and tower tops. Due to the effect of pushing together, some of these positive charges move gradually into the atmosphere of turbulent atmosphere and eventually "settle down" in the lower layer under the cloud.

When discharging to the ground, negatively charged lightning must first enter the positive charge space distributed chaotic below the cloud.

The charge of chaos is a cause of lightning being unable to go straight - (Photo: Getty Images).

Lightning tends to find a positive positive charge space according to the law of bonding. If the edge has 2 or more positive charges, lightning will have to split into branches to go.

Therefore, lightning rays often branch a lot before reaching the ground. In the paths of lightning, the main branch will be a favorable branch and is expected to encounter fewer obstacles. This is similar to the choice of pathways in real life - choose a path that is easier to travel.

Is the direction of lightning only from top to bottom?

According to the Earth Science site, lightning strikes on the ground often have light not too strong . The light that we often see is actually the lightning coming back from the ground to the sky.

Positive ground charges are concentrated at high and sharp peaks, so when the lightning head hits this positive charge, they will be attracted by the negative charge of the lightning. Next, they will move back to the path that negative charge opened earlier.

In addition to lightning from the top down, there is a kind of lightning from the bottom up - (Photo: Metal Floss).

A positive charge will neutralize a large amount of negative charge from the sky and emit terrible light. This is the flash we often see.

This reverse lightning also creates a tree shape shining in the sky, due to going back to the old path of negative charge. Reverse lightning is usually formed at the top of tall towers and then bursts through the clouds and can reach a height of 90km.

This type of reverse lightning has been observed since the 1930s but has only been thoroughly studied recently due to the emergence of more and more towering wind power turbines which have made the reverse lightning phenomenon increasingly popular.

How often do painters draw lightning branches?

The Hungarian team studied the number of branches of a lightning bolt in the painting - (Photo: Gábor Horváth).

According to a study by a group of Hungarian scientists published on the Proceedings of the Royal Society in early June, painters often draw less lightning than they actually do.

According to The New York Times, Dr. Gábor Horváth from the Eötvös Loránd University Optical Research Institute, Budapest, Hungary and his colleagues studied 100 paintings and 400 lightning shots.

The results, they found in the pictures, and the picture have similarities in the number of branches of lightning. Specifically, artists usually only draw up to 11 lightning branches in a picture, while the most number of lightning branches in an image is usually 51.

However, if the camera does not catch all the lightning branches because there are too many lines, the artists who do not draw more than 11 branches are to look at the eyes.

In drawings, lightning does not have more than 11 branches.

Gábor Horváth's team performed another experiment when they showed volunteers about 1,800 scenes. The results showed that the volunteers felt that no more than 11 lightning branches were reasonable. If more, viewers will feel unrealistic.

The results of this study are similar to previous findings about people and counting. People usually count and really notice the group of things with 6-10 individuals.

If one to five individuals, people often ignore it because they are too few, and more than 10 people often only estimate with reduced accuracy.