Ever since I was a child, whenever I see lightning I start to count. It all has to do with physics.<\/p>\n
Sound travels through air at around 1,000 feet per second. So it takes about five seconds for sound to travel a mile (5280 feet).<\/p>\n
Since light travels, well, at the speed of light, we see a lightning strike essentially instantaneously. But the accompanying sound of thunder takes longer.<\/p>\n
For every mile of the distance between you and lightning, there will be about a five second delay before you hear the thunder. For example, a lightning strike two miles away will be accompanied by a clap of thunder after about ten seconds.<\/p>\n
Late last night there was a thunder storm, so I started counting in my bed. Until, that is, I saw a flash of lightning and heard a clap of thunder at pretty much the same time.<\/p>\n
That’s when I hid under the covers and wished I didn’t know so much physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ever since I was a child, whenever I see lightning I start to count. It all has to do with physics. Sound travels through air at around 1,000 feet per second. So it takes about five seconds for sound to travel a mile (5280 feet). Since light travels, well, at the speed of light, we … Continue reading “Five second delay”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22420,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22419\/revisions\/22420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}