Atomic Power - On a Humid Day
Ahhh! Beautiful day! Nice hammock to think about physics! Specifically, how is it possible for a thunderstorm to have the power of numerous atomic bombs! No way you say! Get in the hammock and look at a cloud forming on a nice hot, humid day. Everything appears normal until suddenly the cloud rises upward very fast. Soon it takes on the appearance of a thunderstorm. Lets take a peek at that phenomenon.
The Adiabatic Lapse Rate per thousand feet is 4.5 degrees F. Suppose the dew point, on this beutiful day is 68 degrees F. If the temperature in our hammock is 90 degrees F the base of the clouds forming should be aprroximately 5000 feet above ground. As our fluffy friends approach 13000 feet something happens. At 13000 feet the water vapor begins to freeze!
Now think about what happens when water changes from a liquid state to a solid state - ice. Somewhere in the innermost recesses of my insane mind I remeber a rat fact from my HS Chemistry Teacher that for every gram of water that changes from a liquid to a solid, 580 calories of heat are released. Maybe somebody can tell me, on a hot, humid summer day, how many grams of water are being converted? You get the picture?
The enormous energy being released rapidly pushes the cloud formation to astronomical heights. Down here in "Humid Land" (South Carolina) tops of thunderbumpers reach 50000 to 60000 feet on a regular basis in the afternoon buildups.
Which answers the question of the day! In a single thunderstorm here is the amount of energy released from a thunderstorm.
If the quantity of water that is condensed in and subsequently precipitated from a cloud is known, then the total energy of a thunderstorm can be calculated. In a typical thunderstorm, approximately 5×10 8th power kg of water vapor are lifted, and the amount of energy released when this condenses is 1015 joules. This is on the same order of magnitude of energy released within a tropical cyclone, and more energy than that released during the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
Energy, energy on a Beautiful Day...
Ahhh! Beautiful day! Nice hammock to think about physics! Specifically, how is it possible for a thunderstorm to have the power of numerous atomic bombs! No way you say! Get in the hammock and look at a cloud forming on a nice hot, humid day. Everything appears normal until suddenly the cloud rises upward very fast. Soon it takes on the appearance of a thunderstorm. Lets take a peek at that phenomenon.
The Adiabatic Lapse Rate per thousand feet is 4.5 degrees F. Suppose the dew point, on this beutiful day is 68 degrees F. If the temperature in our hammock is 90 degrees F the base of the clouds forming should be aprroximately 5000 feet above ground. As our fluffy friends approach 13000 feet something happens. At 13000 feet the water vapor begins to freeze!
Now think about what happens when water changes from a liquid state to a solid state - ice. Somewhere in the innermost recesses of my insane mind I remeber a rat fact from my HS Chemistry Teacher that for every gram of water that changes from a liquid to a solid, 580 calories of heat are released. Maybe somebody can tell me, on a hot, humid summer day, how many grams of water are being converted? You get the picture?
The enormous energy being released rapidly pushes the cloud formation to astronomical heights. Down here in "Humid Land" (South Carolina) tops of thunderbumpers reach 50000 to 60000 feet on a regular basis in the afternoon buildups.
Which answers the question of the day! In a single thunderstorm here is the amount of energy released from a thunderstorm.
If the quantity of water that is condensed in and subsequently precipitated from a cloud is known, then the total energy of a thunderstorm can be calculated. In a typical thunderstorm, approximately 5×10 8th power kg of water vapor are lifted, and the amount of energy released when this condenses is 1015 joules. This is on the same order of magnitude of energy released within a tropical cyclone, and more energy than that released during the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
Energy, energy on a Beautiful Day...
