science behind lightning

in case of lightning what i have understood is that when friction occurs between cloud particles or air particles , electrons come out from atoms thus leaving ions behind . now the bottom edge of clouds get filled with electrons and the upper edge with ions . the ground may also act as +ve with respect to the electrons in the clouds . this creates a potential difference and sparks of light are produced ...

my questions are ?
why this light is produced
?

how ground acts as +ve with respect to electrons on clouds ?

or .


in clouds itself hw +ve and _ve charges get separated to create a potential difference ?

The electrons on clouds come mainly from solar winds, and this is likely the power supply that charges them with free electrons. Being the clouds formed in different instants, as well as cosmic irradiated emissions are not constant in time and intensity, but somewhat cahotic, there is no reason to the clouds keep the same potential. The rise of air mass seems to be actually the trigger that generates the discharges, since the Earth's charge is always electrically smaller than the clouds

Hi,

I think it′s the same as with LEDs or like the spectrometer finds out the chemical elements.

****

My semi-professional explanation:

In short: in each atom there are electrons in different orbits.
When there is energy introduced (high voltage) then the electrons move from one orbit to the other.
But they fall back to their usual orbit, then the previoulsy intruduced energy is sent out as a photon = light with specific wavelength.

According this wavelength a spectrometer can decide which atom was involved.

Klaus

That's an interesting theory, do you have any references ?

In fact it is not possible to affirm this with certainty because the science still does not explain with exactitude many of the atmospheric phenomena, even because we are below the ionosphere, where the impact of the electrically charged particles from the outter space occurs, and the access to the uppermost layers is not viable by meteorological balloons. For many subjects, internet is the oracle. We must rely on some sources when from a scientific point of view the thing makes some sense. In the particular case, it is possible to find this, as well as various other conjectures raised in this wiki article. There are dozens of references there, but most of them linked to other webpages .