Why does lighting zigzag?
Lightning tries to find the path of least resistance, not the shortest path. Resistance is variable and depends on water vapor, ionization, etc. which has no reason to occur in a straight line. However, the effect is “quantized” because of the high voltages involved and so the path is not curved as it might be expected to be if it follows precisely the lowest resistance at every point. This results in the zigzag appearance.
