[Alandriel (OP)]

The air around a lightning bolt is superheated to about five times the temperature of the Sun




Anything will print on paper I guess.... or is that true?


How on earth did they measure that and just who was guttsy enough to risk a total fry?

Just how hot is that ... is there anything hotter? What's the hottest thing ever?





Temperature-wise of course!!!!!!!








and don't tell me Bhut Jolokia chili   []




~~~~~~~~~

for a friend

[another_someone]

I assume they simply measured the colour of the light coming from lightening, converted that light to an energy value, and assumed that they were looking at black body radiation, and the temperature would thus correlate to the colour of the light.

The hottest thing even would have had to be the Big Bang that is supposed to have started the universe.

It should be said that when they are talking about being 5 times hotter than the Sun, I am assuming they are talking about the surface of the Sun, that part that is visible to us (around 6000K), but the interior of the Sun should be hotter yet.

[Bored chemist]

I have read that the centre of the sun is at 100 000 000 degrees. How could they have measured that?

[stana]

Think, how many people have been struck by lighting?
Think, how many people have been to the sun and survived?

Personally, i find this hard to believe.

[another_someone]

Think, how many people have been struck by lighting?
Think, how many people have been to the sun and survived?

Personally, i find this hard to believe.

You are confusing temperature with energy (I know temperature correlates with local energy, but the difference is overall energy).

If I drop 1 drop of boiling water on your skin, it may hurt a bit, but you will survive.  If I drop you in a swimming pool of boiling water, you will not survive.  Despite the fact that the temperature of the one drop of boiling water is the same as the swimming pool of boiling water, the overall energy in one drop of boiling water is far less than the total energy in a whole swimming pool of boiling water.  The small amount of energy in that one drop of boiling water, even if it is very hot, will quickly dissipate throughout your body, and by the time it gets to a major organ in your body, it will make very little difference to the temperature of that organ.  If you are dropped into a swimming pool of boiling water, there is enough energy stored in the large mass of water to raise the temperature of your entire body, including critical organs deep within (also, you will suffer burns throughout your skin, which will itself be a problem - very different from the area of skin effected by one drop of boiling water).

[Alandriel (OP)]

George is (as always!) *ever* so clever  []

I love your analogy above.
Makes it so much easier for dumbos like me to unconfuse myself. Local energy, overall energy, temperature... YAY!

but stil.... []

I assume they simply measured the colour of the light coming from lightening, converted that light to an energy value, and assumed that they were looking at black body radiation, and the temperature would thus correlate to the colour of the light.

Someone aimed a spectrophotometer at lightening.... [] []
..... assuming that said lightening was acutally black body radion?
What else could it be?
(and no, sorry I won't be able to read Wiki's page on Planck's law or Stefan-Boltzmann law of black body radiation *and* still keep my head. I need it in basic plain english digestable to non-phycisists)


BoredChemist: I'm with you : how on earth could that be measured?

[another_someone]

I have read that the centre of the sun is at 100 000 000 degrees. How could they have measured that?

Doubt it has been measured - merely calculated based on all sorts of assumptions that may or may not be right.

[another_someone]

I assume they simply measured the colour of the light coming from lightening, converted that light to an energy value, and assumed that they were looking at black body radiation, and the temperature would thus correlate to the colour of the light.

Someone aimed a spectrophotometer at lightening.... [] []
..... assuming that said lightening was acutally black body radion?
What else could it be?
(and no, sorry I won't be able to read Wiki's page on Planck's law or Stefan-Boltzmann law of black body radiation *and* still keep my head. I need it in basic plain english digestable to non-phycisists)

Black body radiation assumes that something that gets very hot will give off radiation across the entire spectrum, and the energy of the heat will be spread across that spectrum, but the maximum colour will depend on how much energy there is to spread across that spectrum (hence you have some things get red hot, while hotter things can get white hot).

But not all light is emitted by heat.  Fluorescent lights don't emit light through heat, and so don't have black body radiation, but simply emit light over a very narrow spectrum - so the colour of light has no bearing  on the temperature of the bulb, which is why they are efficient light emitters, and why they are cool to touch.

[paul.fr]

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/articles/article/howdothunderstormswork-2/