Let me just say I hate Queen. But this isn’t about Queen.
Do you remember your parents telling you that the way to figure out a storm’s distance is to count the seconds between when you see lightning and when you hear thunder? I do. But that’s actually a horrible way to gauge the distance; it’s off by a factor of five.
A few of us were barbecuing outside of Jim, Anthony, and Andy’s apartment (referred to as AJA HQ from now on to reduce typing fatigue) and there was a thunderstorm in the distance with some pretty gnarly lightning strikes. Someone brought up the old mile-for-every-second adage and Mike G. and I started discussing the math behind it.
We realized that it wasn’t adding up. For our calculations, we guessed that the speed of sound was around 650 mph (we later checked on Wikipedia and found out it was 770 mph). Either way, they didn’t support this deceitful legend which has been passed down through generations. 770 mph / 60 minutes / 60 seconds ≈ 0.2 miles per second counted, which means that for every five seconds counted, the storm is about one mile away, not five as previously thought by our forefathers and foremothers. This confirmed our physical evidence since the storm looked to be at least ten miles away and we were not hearing any thunder.
All in all, it was a good night, and it was made better by exposing this heinous lie. Tell your friends!
2 Comments
May 23, 2008 at 4:35 pm
I don’t know about you, but it was always a mile for every five seconds in Wisconsin. Ever since I can remember that was the rule.
June 18, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Yarmulka.
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