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Thunderstorms
When I hear thunder...where is it coming from? And where is lightning coming from? It can't just appear out of no where. I've noticed that right after it thunders, the rain gets a little heavier. Does the thunder have something to do with how much rain is let down?
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Okay... this could get lengthy.
When a lot of hot air rises, the moisture it contains will condense into water droplets, which will freeze when they get high enough. They start to fall then, and collide with water droplets on their way up. This creates static electricity (like when you rub a balloon on a sweater).
Static electricity will build, but as soon as the thing that is charged comes near something that isn't charged, it will discharge. You know when you rub your feet along a carpet and then shock someone? That's the static electricity discharging from you to them.
Lightning is like a giant version of that static shock.
When lightning strikes, it releases a ton of heat. This heat makes the air around it expand and move outwards really fast. The hot air collides with surrounding cool air, and that makes the noise.
The reason why you hear the thunder after seeing lightning strike is because sound travels much slower than light.
It starts raining harder when there's lightning because a ton of warm, moist air is getting lifted during a thunderstorm, and more water droplets are created.
Hope that sort of explains things!
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The quick version of this, without getting into all the molecular stuff, is that thunder is the sound of lightning (light travels faster than sound) and lightning is what happens when molecules in clouds bump into each other... some molecules are positive, some are negative and electricity it what happens when they try to balance themselves (same thing with static electricity, actually)
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