Why can't lightening strike twice in the same place?
470416
The only reason the empire state building is struck so many times, is because it is taller than everything else and due to the fact of it having a very thin point, a large amount of positive atoms congregate at this point and since the lightning is negatively charged atoms its is attracted to this point.  If you talking about it hitting the ground on the same spot then it is possible i think, i am not to sure but it is highly unlikely though.
4524
It is physically impossible for two pieces of matter to occupy the same space at the same time, and this is in fact stated by the laws of physics, think about it, it's just impossible.  It doesn't matter if they  have different frequencies, it's matter, their atoms can touch or something, but never be at the same place as each other at the same time.
619415
From a distance, lightning will come before the thunder.  But at the point of the bolt, they occur at the same time.\n\nFrom the source below:\n"Actually, they do occur at the same time. The time difference that you sense is due to the way sound and light travel. Light travels extremely fast (300,000,000 m/s). In fact, it is faster than anything else. Sound travels at a measly 343 m/s through air. Therefore we can see light in an instant, but it takes a while to hear thunder."
863993
your best bet, would be to get extra fuse and fuse them together one after the other, then you only have to light once.\n\n"BE SAFE AND PREPARED"
938852
The driver cannot see the lighting of the lights on the road as teh car will be travelling at the same speed of light. The car will be on the same point of the road where the light is falling. Because the car will travel that distance along with light which is about to hit the road. let me explain. Let us assume that car is "c" lights are "l" and the lighting is "r". So their positions will be some thing like this\n     c   lr\nAs lights will be before car.\nNow lights have released the light and the light is hits the ground and at teh same time car reaches that point.\n           cr   lr1\nr1 is the light that is released at that point of instant.\nI had explained a lot and in that effort I had missed the point that this cannot be explained like this. LOL.
422778
The UV light has a cycle time that is faster than your eye can detect. Your computer monitor also has a refresh time, again, way too fast for you to see. But if the 2 times line up, it looks like your computer screen is flashing and you can just barely detect it. Highly annoying! Get a regular light bulb lamp for your computer room and leave the flourescent off- that should take care of it.
282569
ah ha my kinda question. lightning comes down only to a point above the strike point then a contacting point comes up from the strike point and connects with the down charge completing the circut. then the charge goes up and down several times. thats what causes the bright flash. here are some pages that will help.
68410
i have an interesting fact for you that can have several conclusions drawn from it, one of them being the existance of a multiverse.  it has to do with an unexplained phenomenon in a well-known experiment.\n\nok, this is the technical part, skip this paragraph if you are familiar with this experiment and concept. there's this experiment, the double slit experiment having to do with shining a light source through two parallel slits and having the photons(little packets of energy present on light waves) in the 2 slits of light interfere with each other to produce an interference pattern. coming through the slits, the two slits of light fan out(like how a flashlight beam is larger on the wall you shine it on then the actual opening of the flashlight.) depending on how the wavelengths of light line up at certain points, they overlap in a certain way that it undergoes constructive and destructive interference. a single wavelength kind of looks like this: ~ but it goes on continuously. so when they overlap, if a higher loop part(the crest) overlaps with another crest, or a trough(the lower loop part) overlaps with another trough, it produces constructive interference, and if a crest overlaps with a trough, it produces destructive interference.  therefore, when the beam of light is shown at the double slits, there is what is called an "interference pattern" on the screen beyond the slits.  this looks like bars of light... in the center, there is a bar of light with a bar of darkness on each side, each having another(weaker) bar of lightness on each side, and then dark and so forth. the reason for this is the wavelengths of the photons with destructive interference are annihalated by the destructive interference so there is no light in those bars, and the photons with constructive interference do show light where they hit.\n\nok, now the interesting part. scientists shown a light source at the double slits so weak that it only emits one photon at a time. so you would expect the screen(which is sensitive and records each spot where the photons hit) to pick up photons in just 2 wide bars, since they're going one at a time so they have nothing to interfere with to produce any other pattern.  however, this is not the case. they find that the one-at-a-time photons land only in where the bars of light would be.  the interference pattern is somehow still being produced. how is that possible? well there's a theory of probability waves, a theory of the photons splitting and interacting with themselves, and the theory you are intersted in. the multiverse can be used to explain this phenomenon.\n\nwell this particular theory of a multiverse says that the universe is constantly splitting. and it has an interesting conception of probability. the theory says that if there is a 50 percent chance of something happening, it will happen in half of the universes that split at that given moment. therefore, recently split universes are very similar to one another.  the theory that tries to explain this single-photon-double-slit phenomenon believes that closely split universes can interact with each other on the subatomic level.  this would mean that the single photon is interfering with the other single photons being emitted by recently split universes. this would explain the pattern.\n\nwell that's the closeset we have to actual 'evidence' concerning a multiverse, although since we can't prove for sure that it's the existence of a multiverse that's causing it, it's not very conclusive evidence.  the theory of a multiverse is not very accepted amongst the science community. probably because it would completely change the way we view everything and there's a chance you might be dead in a bunch of other universes.. according to the theory there are an infinite number of universes, so if you have a one in a million chance of getting hit by lightning, well then you're dead in one in every million of th
493265
Yes, it is possible for lightning to strike water.  It happens all the time.  Lightning is the result of a difference in potential between two bodies.  When the potential is great enough, electricity jumps from the negatively charged body to the positively charged body.  The two bodies can be a cloud and a tree, a cloud and the ground or a cloud and water or from one cloud to another.  Therefore, lightning can be cloud to ground, cloud to cloud or even within a cloud.  What happens when the lightening bolt strikes the water is that at the immediate point of the strike, the temperature of the water instantly reaches the boiling point.  Given the extreme temperature of a lightning bolt and the extreme charge, I would suspect that not only is steam formed but a plasma is also likely formed at the immediate point of the strike.  As to what happens to any biological life at the point of the strike, it would depend on how near they are to the strike.  The closer they are to it, the more likely that they could be killed by the sudden change in temperature and potential.
409956
Actually, there are 3 kinds of lightning strikes:  Cloud to cloud, Ground to Cloud and Cloud to ground.  So the answer to your question is yes.
49699
Look, lightning and thunder HAPPEN at the same time. Lightning causes the air to displace and when it contracts again (immediately) you get thunder, the sound of air filling a gap. You see lightning first because it is traveling @ 180,000 mps, thunder travels at the speed of sound (depends on where you live). You can generally determine how far away you are from the place of origin by counting 1 one-hundred, 2 one hundred, etc until you hear thunder and divide that number by two. That is how many miles away you are.\n\nBTW, if you see lightning and hear thunder at the same time, the event is right where you are!
384059
Double rainbows are a rarity.\n\n\n\n\n \nThe Double Rainbow\n\n \n\n\nEvery once in a while, if you get lucky, you may see a second rainbow on the outside of the first, brighter rainbow. This is the "secondary rainbow" which occurs when raindrops high in the atmosphere refract and reflect light back to the viewer. \n\nThese raindrops are higher than those which cause the "primary rainbow" and are special because they internally reflect the incoming sunlight twice rather than just once. \n\n\n\nNotice that the sunlight hits the bottom of the raindrop to make the secondary rainbow. There is still sunlight hitting the other parts of the raindrop, however, some of the light is simply transmitted through the raindrop without reflecting, and some light is reflected and refracted, but not into our eyes: that light is for someone else's rainbow. \n\nNotice also in the image at the top of the page that the sequence of colors in the secondary rainbow is switched compared to the primary bow. Why is this? \n\n\n\n\n\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
168586
The light bulb uses radiation which is not as effective as convection in this case.
954358
Its the same principle as a welding arc. when the bulb goes out the philament breaks into two pieces. When they split apart, before they get too far apart, the electricity jumps the gap causing a bright flash. After that the current cant make the leap so the bulb is dead.
985973
Actually this is quite possible.  The key is that the laser emits a wavelength which interacts with the N2, O2, and CO2 in the air.  Each of those molecules have specific absorption and emission spectra.  As they absorb the frequencies (research their respective absorption spectra through Wikipedia or Google) of the radiation (not necessarily light) that passes through them, the light will scatter with re-emission at different frequencies (their respective emission spectra), as if reflecting off of  an object.  They wavelengths are the important part, and not necessarily the coherency (as inherent in lasers) which tends to constructively interfere to produce "laser speckle."  The primary reason one might choose a laser is ability to key the energy on the specific frequencies of interest and to control the path of the light.  You would want mirrors on the ceiling and the floor to be perfectly aligned to allow the reflected beams to cover more area of the "laser wall" with multiple reflections from partial reflectors distributing the energy from a primary source through multiple small holes in the mirrors on the floor.  Alignment of the optics, and stability (environmental isolation) would be critical issues of the system.  Normal vibrations and movements of the geology and the house will interfere with the alignment unless properly isolated from it.
548407
Yeah, it does...The truth is, lightning tries to find the shortest distance to ground (The Earth). Although the odds are favorable that lightning won't strike the same place twice, there is nothing in nature to prevent it. It can strike 3 or 4 times in the same spot.
38380
hum...not sure you can do that, however, if you want to have to beams (more or less the same as two different lasers, depending on the purpose of your experiment) in phase with each other, you can use something to split the beam (a beam splitter), and, with a coupla mirrors organized in a certain configuration, you should be able to have 2 lasers in phase