1fsw. A Personal Account of Ball LightningI saw ball lightning
during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1960. I was 16 years old. It was
about 9:00 P.M., very dark, and I was sitting with my girlfriend at a
picnic table in a pavilion at a public park in upstate New York. The
structure was open on three sides and we were sitting with our backs to
the closed side. It was raining quite hard. A whitish-yellowish ball,
about the size of a tennis ball, appeared on our left, 30 yards away,
and its appearance was not directly associated with a lightning strike.
The wind was light. The ball was 8 feet off the ground and drifting
slowly toward the pavilion. As it entered, it dropped abruptly to the
wet wood plank floor, passing within 3 feet of our heads on the way
down. It skittered along the floor with a jerky motion (stick-slip),
passed out of the structure on the right, rose to a height of 6 feet,
drifted 10 yards further, dropped to the ground and extinguished
nonexplosively. As it passed my head, I felt no heat. Its acoustic
emission I liken to that of a freshly struck match. As it skittered on
the floor it displayed elastic properties (a physicist would call them
resonant vibrating modes). Its luminosity was such that it was not
blinding. I estimate it was like staring at a less than 10-watt light
bulb. The whole encounter lasted for about 15 seconds. I remember it
vividly even today, as all eyewitnesses do, because it was so
extraordinary. Not until 10 years later, at a seminar on ball lightning,
did I realize what I had witnessed.Source: Graham K. Hubler, reprinted
by permission from Nature, Copyright 2000, Macmillan Magazines Ltd.Based
on the writer’s description, how would you define ball lightning? Get solution
2fsw. A Personal Account of Ball LightningI saw ball lightning during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1960. I was 16 years old. It was about 9:00 P.M., very dark, and I was sitting with my girlfriend at a picnic table in a pavilion at a public park in upstate New York. The structure was open on three sides and we were sitting with our backs to the closed side. It was raining quite hard. A whitish-yellowish ball, about the size of a tennis ball, appeared on our left, 30 yards away, and its appearance was not directly associated with a lightning strike. The wind was light. The ball was 8 feet off the ground and drifting slowly toward the pavilion. As it entered, it dropped abruptly to the wet wood plank floor, passing within 3 feet of our heads on the way down. It skittered along the floor with a jerky motion (stick-slip), passed out of the structure on the right, rose to a height of 6 feet, drifted 10 yards further, dropped to the ground and extinguished nonexplosively. As it passed my head, I felt no heat. Its acoustic emission I liken to that of a freshly struck match. As it skittered on the floor it displayed elastic properties (a physicist would call them resonant vibrating modes). Its luminosity was such that it was not blinding. I estimate it was like staring at a less than 10-watt light bulb. The whole encounter lasted for about 15 seconds. I remember it vividly even today, as all eyewitnesses do, because it was so extraordinary. Not until 10 years later, at a seminar on ball lightning, did I realize what I had witnessed.Source: Graham K. Hubler, reprinted by permission from Nature, Copyright 2000, Macmillan Magazines Ltd.If the recent hypothesis about ball lightning’s formation described in the text is correct, how can you explain the way the ball lightning Hubler saw “extinguished nonexplosively”? Get solution
2fsw. A Personal Account of Ball LightningI saw ball lightning during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1960. I was 16 years old. It was about 9:00 P.M., very dark, and I was sitting with my girlfriend at a picnic table in a pavilion at a public park in upstate New York. The structure was open on three sides and we were sitting with our backs to the closed side. It was raining quite hard. A whitish-yellowish ball, about the size of a tennis ball, appeared on our left, 30 yards away, and its appearance was not directly associated with a lightning strike. The wind was light. The ball was 8 feet off the ground and drifting slowly toward the pavilion. As it entered, it dropped abruptly to the wet wood plank floor, passing within 3 feet of our heads on the way down. It skittered along the floor with a jerky motion (stick-slip), passed out of the structure on the right, rose to a height of 6 feet, drifted 10 yards further, dropped to the ground and extinguished nonexplosively. As it passed my head, I felt no heat. Its acoustic emission I liken to that of a freshly struck match. As it skittered on the floor it displayed elastic properties (a physicist would call them resonant vibrating modes). Its luminosity was such that it was not blinding. I estimate it was like staring at a less than 10-watt light bulb. The whole encounter lasted for about 15 seconds. I remember it vividly even today, as all eyewitnesses do, because it was so extraordinary. Not until 10 years later, at a seminar on ball lightning, did I realize what I had witnessed.Source: Graham K. Hubler, reprinted by permission from Nature, Copyright 2000, Macmillan Magazines Ltd.If the recent hypothesis about ball lightning’s formation described in the text is correct, how can you explain the way the ball lightning Hubler saw “extinguished nonexplosively”? Get solution
