Lightning is one of the most dramatic effects of electricity.

Part of a series of articles about

Electromagnetism

 Electricity
 Magnetism
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Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the
presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. In
early days, electricity was considered as being not related
to magnetism. Later on, many experimental results and the
development of Maxwell's equations indicated that both electricity and
magnetism are from a single phenomenon: electromagnetism. Various
common phenomena are related to electricity,
including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric
discharges and many others.
The presence of an electric charge, which can be either positive or
negative, produces an electric field. The movement of electric charges
is an electric current and produces a magnetic field.
When a charge is placed in a location with a non-zero electric field, a
force will act on it. The magnitude of this force is given by Coulomb's
law. Thus, if that charge were to move, the electric field would be
doing work on the electric charge. Thus we can speak of electric
potential at a certain point in space, which is equal to the work done by
an external agent in carrying a unit of positive charge from an
arbitrarily chosen reference point to that point without any
acceleration and is typically measured in volts.