r/whowouldwin • u/He-Man69 • Aug 22 '17
Special Tournament of Power Finals
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the moment you've all been waiting for, the Conclusion the the Tournament of Power. We've had some upset victories and crushing defeats along the way, but we're not here to talk about losers. Lets introduce the finalists.
In this corner we have the lean mean insult throwing machine u/tinkerinthekitchen, though we haven't seen them debate much this tournament what we have seen has been a blend of insults and scans, will they be able to make there opponent KOWTOW
to them?
In the next corner we have the undefeated /u/mommid, Mommid has been debating in this tourney ever since the Tribunal post, and was quickly identified as a force to watch out for in this tournament. Mommid has out debated every opponent placed in front of him, will he be able to do the same this time?
by now you know the rules, this round will consist of 5 days of debating and 1 day of voting.
Last but not least we have the match-ups,
they are: Laylin Farlier Vs Aladdin,
Lin Ming Vs Escanor
and Meng Hao Vs Daemon Spade
Good luck, may the best man win
1
u/TinkerintheKitchen Aug 26 '17
Alright you silly junior, since you have not posted a characterrant showing the accepted speed of lightning, and I could not find it when I searched, here is a little rant I made that is not allowed on the sub because this senior's sheer presence is enough to collapse any minor subs below 100k subscribers. And so I shall post my resplendent might. Expect this senior's follow up blows soon, this is just a counter to your "lightning isn't as fast as lightning" argument. this senior awaits your published, peer reviewed article on the speed of lightning to counter this.
It seems it's time for this senior to orate on the Dao of Heaven and Earth for silly juniors who do not understand the mechanics of heaven.
let's start off with explaining how lightning works, and by defining lightning. As you can see here, lightning is "the occurrence of a natural electrical discharge of very short duration and high voltage between a cloud and the ground or within a cloud, accompanied by a bright flash and typically also thunder.". Now, onto explaining how it works. Lightning takes multiple steps. First comes the downward leaders. These are paths of ionized air, often branching, but sometimes not, down from an area of high negative charge inside the cloud. These sometimes meet with an upward streamer, another channel of partially ionized air, from an area of high positive charge on the ground. This establishes a connection between the area of high negative charge inside the cloud, and the area of high positive charge in the ground. Please note that this is NOT lightning, as it does not meet the definition. Even though it is a necessary step for lightning to happen, it is not the discharge step, where the massive amounts of negative charge inside the cloud is discharged into the ground. And, while this step does take a large amount of electrical energy, that is dwarfed by the discharge in the next step. However, if someone dodges natural lightning, then nine times out of ten it's going to be them dodging the downward leaders, as the speed of this section is far more reasonable (more on this later).
Now, after this comes the return stroke. This is the stage in which all the negative charge inside the cloud is equalized with the ground. It does this by sending massive amounts of electrons through the channel of ionized air established by the previous step. This stage is both the brightest and loudest of stages, and is the stage that meets the definition of "lightning". After this, there are often multiple other strokes known as re strikes, which are separated from the initial return stroke by a reasonably large period of time, about 40ms. This is why lightning sometimes has a strobe effect, as there are multiple other strikes happening to cause additional light. These strikes are similar in properties to the return stroke
So, how fast does this make lightning? Well, to start with, here's a study published by the Geophysical Research Letters journal finding:
And so the return stroke and subsequent following strokes all have approximately the same speed, that being about a third of lightspeed. If you were to approximate this in mach numbers, you'd get about mach 294,000. But how about the speed of the downward leaders? Well, here's a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research:
To put this in mach numbers, the speed of the downward leaders was found to range from about mach 300 to about mach 4100, averaging at mach 1200, with a large amount of deviation within that range. And so let's go with the average here, to say that the speed of the downward headers is about mach 1200.
TL;DR / Conclusions
For a lightning strike to happen, first downward leaders need to connect the ground and the cloud. These downward leaders move at about mach 1200 on average, and don't meet the definition of lightning. Then there is the discharge, or return stroke, where the electrical energy built up in the cloud is discharged down the pathway established before. This discharge moves at about a third of lightspeed, and it fits the definition of lightning. There are often multiple other strikes following this return stroke, all with similar properties to the original strike.