How Far Away is a Lightning Strike?

Classification … PROSPERITY > #SCIENCE, #HOWTO, #FACTOID, #LIGHTNING … (LIFECRAFT TOOL)
Overview … Perhaps you were just wondering about lightning. Perhaps you saw a lightning flash recently, and you wondered if it was close … or far away. Here’s the simple calculation you can do in your head.

1. See the flash.

2. Next, until you hear the thunder, just count the seconds.
   (Mentally just say “yer big nose is one, yer big nose is two, yer big nose is three, yer big nose is four, yer big nose is five,” and that’s 5 seconds.)

3. When you hear the thunder, divide the seconds by 5.

4. That’s how many miles away the lightning strike was.

5. So if you counted five seconds, that lightning strike was a mile away.
   

• Light travels fast. Sound travels slower.

• Light’s so fast that light from the sun—which is 93 million miles away—only takes 8 minutes to get here. That’s a speed of 186,282 miles a second. That’s way fast. Way, way fast.

• But sound, which is a pressure-wave moving through our air, is much slower. It’s only 767 miles per hour.

• Light: 186, 282 miles per SECOND.
  Sound: 767 miles per HOUR.

• So, at the place where the lightning struck, the light and the sound happen at the same time. But farther way from the lightning strike, the light gets to your eyes INSTANTLY, and the sound pushes through the air more slowly, so you only hear it later.

There ya’ go!

• Lightning can carry hundreds of millions of volts.

• Lightning is hotter than the surface of the sun.

• In the U.S., we get 20,000 million strikes each year.

• Lightning can travel 30,000 times faster than a bullet.

• Lightning can strike from a clear blue sky, far from the storm.

• Lightning creates a magnetic pulse strong enough to fry electronics.

• The longest lightning bolt we ever measured stretched across 477 miles.

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