It makes sense that lightening reaches us faster bcoz it travels at the speed of light while thunder travels at the speed of sound. But shouldn’t it last for same duration as thunder?
In: Physics
The light and sound waves travel many different paths to get to you, not just the most direct route. The light waves that don’t travel in the most direct route to you end up being dissipated to Be nearly undetectable to the human eye(unless they are hitting mirrors…), meanwhile the sound waves reach you after doing a bunch of reflections, meaning that the sound waves have travelled on a bunch of different paths of different distances, but of kept adequate intensity for you to hear. Because they have tracked different distances, they arrive at a bunch of different times.
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