Lightning Bolt

For my project, I made a wooden lightning bolt surrounded by LED lights. 

Steps:

First I drew out my lightning bolt and transferred it to the computer, then cut them out with the laser cutter. The next step was to glue together the bolts and make adjustments with measuring so I could fit the raspberry pi into the bolts. Next, I soldered the LEDs to the raspberry pi and put it all into my wooden blot. The last thing I did was oil the wood and I was finished.

While I was doing my project, it made me wonder exactly how lightning is made. So I did some research and found out the lightning is made from the friction of the clouds moving together usually during a storm. Whereas thunder is the sound of lightning because it moves so fast, it breaks the sound barrier creating a sonic boom. Benjamin Franklin was the first to show that thunderstorms let out electricity in 1772. Lightning usually comes from a parent cumulonimbus cloud. The three different types of lightning are cloud to cloud, cloud to ground, and cloud to air. Lightning is very fascinating to me and that is one of the reasons I chose to make a bolt.