Abstract
DURING a recent night thunderstorm I got out my colour-top, with the usual disc of so-called primary colours arranged to blend into grey or white on rotation, in order to show to my children the instantaneousness of the lightning, and that by its light the disc would, as I had no doubt, appear stationary in one or several successive positions according to the character of the flash, as it does by the light of an ordinary electric spark from a Leyden jar or induction coil. On trying the experiment, however, by turning the disc (about forty times in a second) at a window in a dark room opposite to the cloud in and from which the discharges were taking place, I found that this was only very partially the case. When the direct stroke was actually visible, or only slightly veiled by cloud the effect I looked for was produced, the bands of colour standing out clear and apparently motionless; but at other times during the apparently (to the eye) prolonged flash, the colours blended so as to indicate a continuous fainter light in addition to the occasional instantaneous appearance of definite colour and form due to the intermittent light of the discharge. Of course I satisfied myself that there was no other light to account for this, the night and the room being very dark in the intervals of the flashes, and I repeated the experiment in another night storm (on the 11th) with just the same result. The effect appears to be due to the retention of light in the cloud by phosphorescence, and, so far as I can find on inquiry, does not seem to have been noticed before.
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SMITH, B. Instantaneousness of Lightning. Nature 6, 242 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/006242d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/006242d0
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