Question

Lighting strikes occur when the electric field produced by positive charge in a thundercloud and negative charge on the ground exceeds the dielectric strength of air. Consider a lightning strike from thundercloud that is 1 mi above ground. Assume that the bolt carries 30 kA of current, and lasts for 0.5 ms. 1. The ground and clouds can be thought of as a parallel plate capacitor. What is the capacitance of this capacitor? 2. What is the effective plate area of this capacitor?

Answer 1