Question

the air between cloud and the building breaks down and there is a flash of lighting. deduce the direction in which the electrons will flow in this ligthing bolt

Answer 1

The positive and negative charges, in the clouds, exert a strong force of attraction on each other.

The air present between them does not let these charges move towards each other.

However, when the charge build up goes beyond a certain limit, the air breaks down and loses its normal insulating nature.

There is,then, a sudden flow of very large amount of charges through some parts of the air. We call this phenomenon as electric discharge.

Such a discharge heats up the air very much and it starts glowing and flashing.

It is such a flash that we see as lightning.