Actually, after looking at the Mako vs Ming Hua scene again and looking up what Lightning does when hitting water, I might have to disagree with the point on Chi Lightning being able to conduct electricty in water. Im not sure if my point is right or wrong, but I would still like to address it since something was bothering me in that scene.
Okay. So after looking up what Lightning specifically does when hitting water, I found that lighting strikes, even average ones, can span over at least 5 miles in length when in water and reach temperatues hotter than the Sun's surface. And although it does not target water as much as land, lightning specifically spreads all over the water its hitting, acting as a conductor. Its capable of hitting nearby boats and fish that are near the surface of water,
according to this link .
And from what this link says , average lightning strikes can even go from 5 to 10 miles when in water.
Now, Mako and Ming were fighting in a decently sized cavern during that battle and, from what the fighting scene showed, Mako wasnt specifically targetting Ming with his chi lightning. He was aiming for the water
itself to try and take her out. In addition, since he and Ming were the only people in the cavern at the time, there would be no reason for Mako to specifcially target only her when aiming at the water,
specifically the water she was using to fight with, would be an easier way to beat her. Now, if what I gathered about real ligthing is correct, then if Chi Lightning was able to conduct in water like real lightning can then Mako's lightning attack would have spanned
at least 5 miles from where he is onwards in the water, clearly much larger than the entire Cavern's own size. But when he launched it, the chi lightning only surrounded and targeted Ming. It wasnt even electrocuting the area in which they both were in, or the area of water Mako himself was targetting, as shown here:
Red shows where the lightning is sparking. Yellow shows the water in the cavern that wasn't effected by the lightning.
Furthermore, lets take into account the temperature (if it will help). Now, average lightning is able to have temperatures hotter than the heat of the surace of the Sun. And the Sun's surface is roughly 5505 degrees C, or 9941 degrees F. Of course, water is also able to evaporate just from pure sunlight by itself and even boil with less heat but lets find the temparatures of those too. To boil water, you would have to be at 100 degrees C or 212 degrees C. For Sunlight, I couldnt find an exact temperature but, IIRC, room temperature is enough to evaporate water. And room temperature is about 70 degrees F or 21.1111 degrees C. Now, as far as chi lightning goes, to claim that the temperature of chi lightning generated by Fire Benders is lower than that of the sun can be very speculative, so I wont really go into that. But what we can determine is that for it to be considered real lightning, it would have to have temperatures that at least rival, if not, surpass the heat of evaportation and/or boiling water. But from what we can gather here, given its portrayal, it should be safe to say that Mako's lightning was not even at boiling or evaporting temperature as when it hits the water, we dont see the water start to steam up or even start to boil (and this isnt the first time lightning in Avatar hasnt shown the required temperature or heated burning effects incase those wondered). Furthermore, when Ming is directly hit, electrocuted by the lightning and passes out, she doesnt even show to have steam coming from her or have any kind of burn marks/effects. And incase those want to claim that waterbenders can likely not show burnmarks when hit with anything hot, that is not true. Katara was easily burned when Aang played around with fire and it required her to use healing in order to treat her burns. So, to make things short, if Mako's chi lightning didnt have the right temperature to even boil or evaporate water, then there is no way that his lightning could be as hot or hotter than the Sun's surface, temperature required for lightning to be considered natural real lightning.
Again, I don't know if these are good points to bring up, but this scene was bothering me after I rewatched it and I wanted to say what was on my mind.
