Everyone of us has seen a lightning in their life. Some of us consider it scary and dangerous, but there are people, who think it is the most beautiful thing in the world. They are right indeed, but none of them probably has seen every single lightning, because at the moment there are plausibly 3500 thunderstorms hitting the earth each one of them producing a total of 100 lightnings a second.

This is the way nature uses to balance energy between atmosphere and the Earth. In the ancient times people believed that the God punishes peasants with the lightnings. People put the blame on supernatural forces until eighteen century, when Leyden jar was discovered proving the theory, that electricity can be stored for indefinite periods. Then, in 1752, Benjamin Franklin put forward a theory saying that a lightning was a way of nature’s discharging currents, which are found in the upper atmosphere and in the Earth. Since then, many researches were working on the problem of the lightning, which only proved that this phenomenon is very complicated and still requires a lot of work on it.

In order for a lightning to exist there must be a process of cloud formation. Warm air has a tendency of moving in the upward direction and as we know with increase of altitude temperature decreases. The process is very rapid and large masses of air, which change their temperature, produce a violent activity. At one point tiny droplets of water found in the air gain positive charge and begin to freeze. They are move to the top of the cloud and form a positive charge center. Bigger ice crystals move downwards and gain a negative charge. They also create a center, but at the base of the cloud and have opposite charge to those in the upper part of a cloud. In order to balance electric fields positive charge ions appear on the ground just below the cloud. While cloud gets bigger and bigger magnetic field gets stronger and stronger. Negative and positive charges tend to attract each other, so there is huge probability that they will neutralize each other. Both of them send high energy potentials to find their way to the ground. Due to weak conductance of the air it is very hard for them to get through. Though, when it is overcome, a pilot streamer having negative charge is sent to the ground. Stepped leader follows it and ionizes way behind it. When it reaches ground, high current returns streamer back to the cloud. It travels along the path of ionized air created by the stepped leader. This phenomenon we call a lightning.