[originaltext] Although April did not bring us the rains we all hoped for, a

Although April did not bring us the rains we all hoped for, and(23)although the Central Valley doesn’t generally experience the atmospheric sound and lightning that can accompany those rains, it’s still important for parents to be able to answer the youthful questions about thunder and lightning.
    The reason these two wonders of nature are so difficult for many adults to explain to children is that they are not very well understood by adults themselves. For example, did you know that the lightning we see flashing down to the earth from a cloud is actually flashing up to the cloud from the earth?(24)Our eyes trick us into thinking we see a downward motion when it’s actually the other way around.(25)But then, if we believed only what we think we see, we’d still insist that the sun rises in the morning and sets at night.
    Most lightning flashes take place inside a cloud, and only a relative few can be seen jumping between two clouds or between earth and a cloud. But, with about 2,000 thunderstorms taking place above the earth every minute of the day and night, there’s enough activity to produce about 100 lightning strikes on earth every second.
    Parents can use thunder and lightning to help their children learn more about the world around them. When children understand that the light of the lightning flashes reaches their eyes almost at the same moment, but the sound of the thunder takes about 5 seconds to travel just one mile, they can begin to time the interval between the flash and the crash to learn how close they were to the actual spark.
Questions 23 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.
23. What is special in the area of the Central Valley according to the speaker?
24. Why do we believe that lightning is a downward motion?
25. What can be concluded from the speech?