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Franklin's friend Kinnersley traveled throughout the eastern United States in the 1750s demonstrating man-made "lightning" on model thunder houses to show a how an iron rod placed into the ground would protect a wooden structure. He explained that lightning followed the same principles as the sparks from Franklin's electrostatic machine.
Plasma was first identified in laboratory by Sir William Crookes. Crookes presented a lecture on what he called "radiant matter" to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in Sheffield, on Friday, 22 August 1879. [11] Systematic studies of plasma began with the research of Irving Langmuir and his colleagues in the 1920s.
Electrostatic machines are typically used in science classrooms to safely demonstrate electrical forces and high voltage phenomena. The elevated potential differences achieved have been also used for a variety of practical applications, such as operating X-ray tubes, particle accelerators, spectroscopy, medical applications, sterilization of food, and nuclear physics experiments.
Lightning is a natural phenomenon, more specifically an atmospheric electrical phenomenon. It consists of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions, either both existing within the atmosphere or one within the atmosphere and one on the ground, with these regions then becoming partially or wholly electrically neutralized.
During an electrostatic discharge, such as a lightning flash, the affected atmospheric molecules become electrically overstressed. The diatomic oxygen molecules are split, and then recombine to form ozone (O 3), which is unstable, or reacts with metals and organic matter. If the electrical stress is high enough, nitrogen oxides can form.
The Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research is a scientific laboratory studying the cloud processes that produce lightning, hail, and rain, located in the Magdalena Mountains of central New Mexico. The lab is operated by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech) with funding from the National Science Foundation.
Sheet lightning is cloud-to-cloud lightning that exhibits a diffuse brightening of the surface of a cloud, caused by the actual discharge path being hidden or too far away. The lightning itself cannot be seen by the spectator, so it appears as only a flash, or a sheet of light. The lightning may be too far away to discern individual flashes.
Natural plasmoid produced in the near-Earth magnetotail by magnetic reconnection. A plasmoid is a coherent structure of plasma and magnetic fields.Plasmoids have been proposed to explain natural phenomena such as ball lightning, [1] [2] magnetic bubbles in the magnetosphere, [3] and objects in cometary tails, [4] in the solar wind, [5] [6] in the solar atmosphere, [7] and in the heliospheric ...