ELi5: How does lightning produce light, and how does that light differ from sunlight?
In: 8
* When electricity goes through things, they heat up.
* When things get really hot, they glow.
Lightning is a lot of electricity going through the air. The air in the electricity’s path gets so hot it glows brightly – that’s lightning. It’s the same effect as the filament of a lightbulb, where electricity goes through a metal wire and makes it hot enough to brightly glow.
Sunlight has some similarity, except in this case the sun’s matter is being heated by its own nuclear fusion rather than a flow of electricity. Also the fusion reactions in the sun directly produce photons (light) too, besides the light glow emitted by the surface being really hot.
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