What is lightning?

Is your air conditioner secretly doing chemistry while you’re inside pretending summer doesn’t exist? How does it turn hot air into cool air, and why does part of the AC blow out even more heat? In this episode, Melissa and Jam crack open the mysterious black box of air condition ...  Show more

#044 You know what we're talking about. That spectacular fizzy geyser. This week, Melissa and Jam explore what makes diet coke and mentos go crazy together. Is it love? Is it hate? Is it chemistry? Why diet coke specifically? Or more importantly, why mentos? Let's get into it. Su ...  Show more

In episode 79, we learn about lightning and thunder.  What causes lightning?  How hot is lightning?  Can you have lightning without rain?  Can you have thunder without lightning?  Olivia interviews Greg, a meteorologist, to ask him some questions about lightning and thunder an ...

For millennia, people have been reporting stories of mysterious spheres of light that glow, crackle, and hover eerily during thunderstorms. They’ve been spotted in people’s homes, and are even said to be able to pass through windows. No one knows how ball lightning forms — but th ...  Show more

Why does lightning travel in a zig-zag rather than a straight line?So why does it strike precise points such as the end of a pole? If the average lightning bolt contains up to 1 billion volts, how is it that humans can survive being struck? How many times does the Empire State Bu ...  Show more

Daniel and Katie explain how electric current, lightning and static electricity emerge from the strange quantum nature of electrical charge.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.