>Lightning in a jar
 
Maybe some bright spark can prove it possible, pun intended.

Склад двачей.

@Background Pony #F37A
 
I suppose. Maybe I forgot how close it was to red.

@Dirty Bit  

 
Wouldn’t the violet ones be the most powerful then since violet light has the most energy in the visible part of the spectrum, while yellow has the least energy of the colors shown?

@Background Pony #ED21
 
Maybe it’s the show deciding to do just that: Showing diversity. And if I were to venture a guess on the certain shapes:
 
Arrows = Bound to connect to the ground, or perhaps the highest metallic object or tree.
 
Scrunched = Compressed for louder thunderclaps and stronger bolts
 
Split = Possibly either two separate bolts in one, or simply a bolt that fluctuates in its pattern.

@Dirty Bit  
But what about the different shapes. Those green ones have an arrow, the purple ones on the right seem scrunched up, most of the bolts on the left have ‘normal’ shapes, and in the back there appear to be bolts that split partway.
 
All the lightning we’ve seen in the show seems like your average, everyday lightning. Why is there such a diversity here?

@Background Pony #ED21
 
I wouldn’t call it a theory so much as I’d label them as respective lights.
 
Each different colored bolt represents a certain intensity in comparison to the light spectrum. No doubt, the yellow ones are the most powerful, or travel the longest in distance.

Anyone have a theory on why lighting bolts come in different colors and shapes?

@Background Pony Number 17
 
Very nice…

@Background Pony Number 17  
My mind just bucking exploded

Okay, time for SCIENCE!
 
You can, in theory, store lighting in a bottle. A lightning bolt is basically a quantity of electric charge, and an object that stores an electric charge is a capacitor. A capacitor is defined by two surfaces close together, with voltage difference across the surfaces. In this case, the surfaces are the inner and outer walls of the jars, and their separation is the thickness of their glass walls.
 
Judging from RD’s size there, I’d say each lightning jar is about a foot tall by a foot wide, giving a surface area of about 5 square feet or 0.5 square meters. The jars appear to be pretty sturdy, so I’m judging the thickness to be about a centimeter. The capacitance of each jar is:  
C = eo x er x [area] / 4 π [separation distance],  
where eo is the electric contstant, about 8.8x10E-12 farads (the unit of capacitance) per meter.  
and er is the relative permittivity of glass, about 4.
 
Thus the capacitance of each those jars is about 1.4x10E-10 farads, or 140 picofarads. That’s tiny even by most electronics standards, but still, we have a working capacitor here.
 
The amount of electric energy held by a capacitor is dependent on the voltage and capacitance:  
W=[CV^2]/2, where W is the amount of energy (in joules), C is the capacitance and V is the voltage.  
Rearranged, we have V = sqr [2W/C].
 
An average lightning bolt has about 5 billion joules of energy. To store one in one of those glass jars, the voltage inside the jar would be about 8 gigavolts. That’s like 10,000 times the voltage of a lighting bolt when it strikes, meaning each jar is supercharged to contain the bolt (normally spread across the atmosphere) inside.
 
And the pegasi are storing hundreds of these things on shelves where any one could fall and crack open, discharging all that energy instantly.

Lightning in a Bottle. I love how literal Equestria is.

Lightning should not be stored easily breakable containers.

@Prof.NightJack
 
I just think of the expression ‘Capturing lightning in a bottle’ myself

@gittonsxv  
 
Before the unicorns invented shield spells, the pegasi had a more…direct…method.

So want to make a moonshine joke, but can’t think of one that isn’t lame.

i can see why the pegasi was very military in the early days.  
they control the weather, maelstroms, hurricanes, tornadoes, artillery strike of lightning…  
shit man.

The references…

@varemia  
It’s a reference to the figure of speech “catching lightning in a jar.”

@Necarch  
not necessarily, maybe ball lightning

Are those tiny suns on the middle left shelf?

@PonyPon  
No.

@schpeelah  
I’m aware, but I’m taking about these, were they called clouds seeds in the episode?

@PonyPon  
Cloud seeding is a thing in real life.

Wow, they’re actually showing lightning in the colours they more commonly are in real life.