In a thunderstorm does the lightening reach you first or the sound? why?

Question

Its for my science homework

Answer 1

The lightning reach you first because light travels faster than sound, so you always see lightning first before you hear thunder.

Answer 2

Light travels faster than sound, Jus look at the sun, They can tell how far away it is because it takes 7 minutes for light to reach the earth, SO they put that against how fast light is to calculate it's distance from us.

(This COULD be a good extra for your science Homework?)

Thanks,

Answer 3

The light reach us frst followed by the sound of the lightning.

That is because light travels at 299,792 kilometres per second, while sound travels at a rate of only about 335 metres per second. The number of seconds between seeing the lightning flash and hearing the thunder, divided by three, yields the distance of the lightning from the observer in kilometres.

Answer 4

If the lightning gets to you, you'll never hear the sound!  

Where do you want the flowers sent?

Answer 5

The others are right.  Now you should look up the speeds of light & sound so you can give your teacher some additional information!

Answer 6

The lightning causes superheated air to expand rapidly, just like you would get in an explosion. At the point of origin they happen almost simultaneously, but because light travels at 186,000 miles per sceond, and sound at only 761 miles per hour, the lightning looks pretty much instant, whereas the sound takes time to reach our ears. If you want to know how far away a thunderstorm is then count the seconds between the flash and the sound and divide by 5 - this will tell you how many miles away the centre of the storm is.

Answer 7

light travels faster than sound, so lightning

Answer 8

the lightining reaches you first because the speed of light it about twice the speed of sound

Answer 9

see the lightning then a few seconds later hear the thunder - light travels at 186,000 miles per second (in a vacuum)

sound travels at 740 miles per hour

Answer 10

lightning, light travels faster then sound!!

Answer 11

Light travels faster than sound, thats why you see it then hear it.