Whats the connection between thunder and lightning? Can one occur without the other?
by notmrjohn on May 9th, 2005 ( I meant to type BlaYlock, is there gonna be a family fued?) Glenn, When thunder is used to describe another sound it is being used metaphorically or compared to actual thunder. Not really an alternate definition. “Thunder” specifically means “sound caused by lightning.” The closest thing to real thunder is a “sonic boom” and thunder is closely related, a sonic boom however is caused by the actual parting of the air by a physical object, the plane, and then ‘clapping’ back together behind it. It used to be thought that thunder was caused the same way. As Glenn said, it is the actual energy of the lightning that causes a rapid expansion or”‘explosion.” There is bit of physical in thunder and a bit of the energy cause in a sonic boom.The etymology is kinda strange, there is an ancient Persian word “tundar” which means thunder, it can be traced way back to even more ancient Indo- European roots, the English word seems to come directly from Scandinavian and G
