Lightning Lab Find out: What makes lightning? Can I make a spark? Can I generate electricity?

Let’s Explore Lightning and Static Electricity!

Make Your Hair Stand Up! Play! Blow up the balloon and tie it. Rub it against your hair on top of your head. Watch what happens! Your hair will stick up! *This also happens when you take off your wool hat in the wintertime. You usually notice static electricity in the winter when the air is very dry. During the summer, the air is more humid. The water in the air helps electrons move off you more quickly, so you can not build up as big of a charge.

Make Your Hair Stand Up! Write! Why do you think your hair stands up?

Make Your Hair Stand Up! Explain! Why does this happen? It’s because of static electricity! When you rub the balloon on your hair, you’re covering it with little negative charges. Now that each of the hairs has the same charge, they want to repel each other. In other words, the hairs try to get as far away from each other as possible. The farthest they can get is by standing up and away from each other. Talk about a bad hair day! Lightning is made with static electricity!

Make Your Hair Stand Up! Explain! Many scientists think lightning is caused by positively charged ions bumping up against negatively charge ions in thunderheads (cumulonimbus clouds). See the video below: s/forces-of-nature-kids/lightning-101-kids.html

Make Lightning in Your Mouth! Play! Turn out all the lights and look in a mirror. Wait a few minutes until your eyes get accustomed to the darkness. Put a Wint-O-Green or a Pep-O-Mint lifesaver in your mouth. While keeping your mouth open, break the lifesaver up with your teeth and look for sparks. If you do it right, you should see bluish flashes of light.

Make Lightning in Your Mouth! Write! Why do you think you see a spark? What’s going on?

Make Lightning in Your Mouth! Explain! Why does this happen? When you break the lifesaver apart, you’re breaking apart sugars inside the candy. The sugars release little electrical charges in the air. These charges attract the oppositely charged nitrogen in the air. When the two meet, they react in a tiny spark that you can see.

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Watch this! Play! Turn all of the lights off in the room. (The darker the better!) Rub the balloon on your hair for several seconds. Then hold the statically charged balloon near the end of the light bulb. Repeat as many times as desired.

Watch this! Write! What happened? Why do you think it happened?

Watch this! Explain! When you rub the balloon on your hair, the balloon builds up an electrical charge (static electricity). Touching the charged balloon to the end of the fluorescent light bulb causes the electrical charge to jump from the balloon to the bulb. This is what illuminates the light bulb. Lightning is an electrical discharge within a thunderstorm. As the storm develops, the clouds become charged with electricity. Scientists are still not sure exactly what causes this, but they do know that when the voltage becomes high enough for the electricity to leap across the air from one place to another, lightning flashes! Lightning can spark within a cloud, from one cloud to another, from a cloud to the ground, or from the ground to a cloud.

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