how much time passes between a flash of lightening and the sound of thunder?
607206
No time passes between the two.  The occur at the same time.\n\nIf you are standing a mile away, however, you will see the flash before you hear the sound.  This is, of course, because light is faster than sound.  \n\nYou can use this to estimate how far away a storm is.  The light will reach you almost instantaneously, while the sound will take aproximately five seconds per mile to reach you.  Therefore 15 seconds = 3 miles, etc. \n\nOf course, storms can be large, and the lightnening can happen anywhere within the storm, so it isn't all that accurate for gaging the storm's distance.
204272
Light travels faster than sound.
736786
because LIGHT travels faster than SOUND!!!\n\nSpeed of light:  186,282.397 miles per second\n\nSpeed of sound:  1238 km/h or 770 mph
492088
The speed of sound isn't even close to the speed of light. The speed of sound in air is usually given as 343 meters per second at sea level in air and the speed of light is approximately 3 X 10^8 meters per second (300,000,000 m/s)in a vaccuum.
108122
http://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning.htm
787893
The light is projected from the flasher and is reflected back\nto the camera lens. Light travels at approx. 186,000 miles per hour which is at least 982,080,000 ft. per second.\n(982 million feet per sec.)  If an object were 10 feet away, the time it would take to go to the object and return to the camera\nwould be about  20 billionths of a second.  The camera shutter\nspeed(the duration of the opened shutter) with flash is\naround 1/250 of a second which is millions of times longer than\nis necessary for the flash to make the round trip. The important\nthing to consider is the flash duration. That is the length of time \nthat the light is actually in existance. Fortunately for the end user\nonly the manufacturer has to consider this. The flash duration\nis between 1/1000 and 1/2800 of a second so again, the shutter speed is plenty long enough to accomodate this duration.
148
In a sense, any microphone is picking up sounds from the past, due to the speed of sound. This is similar to what you mentioned with radio telescopes.\n\nThe main differences are 1) velocity -- light moves at about 1 foot per nanosecond while sound moves around 1 foot per 1/1000 second, and 2) that sound moving though a medium diffuses quite rapidly. Something really loud, like thunder, you might hear from 20-30 seconds away. For normal, everyday sounds, the delay won't be more than maybe a few tenths of a second.
909018
Actually Chameleon is right. Despite the fact that a lightning bolt lasts only fractions of a second, the average bolt transfers almost 500 megajoules of energy. Thats enough to light a 100-watt light bulb for about 2 months.\n\nAs for harnessing the power behind lighting, it can be done on a small scale. Look at a Vandegraaff generator which uses a belt and metal dome to create electric charge. As for the lightning that comes from storms. It is surprising to realize that it is quite unpredictable to human kind at this point, and the thought of being able to control lightning on that large of a scale is simply not feasible at this time.\n\n-Christopher
770621
"Planck time". Which I think is around 10^-43 second. It's basically the smallest possible amount of time between two moments. Nothing can occur faster than it.
936910
A lightning before death
549998
Yes and no.  While if there's lightning there's going to be thunder, it could be occurring so far up or away that you might see it but just not be able to hear the thunder.
415548
light travels at 186,000 miles per second, the earth is 25,000 miles around....\n\n25000/186000= 0.1344 seconds
871688
Sound travels faster than light. Many people believe the opposite is true, citing as evidence the fact that there is a delay between when you see something far away and when you hear the sound it produces (fireworks, someone hitting a baseball, etc.). Though the sound reaches your ears before the light reaches your eyes, it takes your brain longer to process aural input, while it can process visual input almost instantaneously.
1093017
Your question is incomplete, part of it looks to be cut off.\n\nThis is just a guess, but the question almost seems like it is asking how long after the student claps his hands does he hear the eco bounce back off the wall.\nIn this case, one would need to know the speed of sound (or one could just estimate it to be about 340.29 m/s).\nSince speed is given as distance traveled per unit time, one can calculate the amount of time it would take something traveling at a given speed to be the distance traveled divided by the speed.  In this case with the sound, the sound traveled to the wall (165 meters) and back again (another 165 meters), for a total distance of 330 meters.
263764
1) Echoes are caused because the sound bounces off the surrounding landscape, just like ripples in a pond reflect back from the edge and start going back in the other direction.\n2) Sound comes later than the lightning because sound goes about 700 mph and light goes about 990,000 times faster than that.  So if the lightning is 1 mile away, the light gets to you in a fraction of a second and the thunder arrives after 5 seconds.
654472
Hi, chris........both are actually the result of same thing,....\n\nwhen two clouds come together, there is electric discharge,\n\na cloud can be seen as a large capacitor.......\n\nso sound and light are produced at the same time.......\n\nsince sound travels at 330 mph, and light at 300000 mps\n\nsound reaches us later coz its very slow compared to light, so we see light immediately but it takes time for the sound to reach our ears..........\n\nwhich is better??? one doesnt happen without the other....\n\nthe power generated in a lightning is 50000 volts......\n\nscientists are trying to store the power these days, \n\nthe same they cant do with sound, and lighting is obviously more dangerous......
719035
Thunder occurs immediately but because sound travels at about 1000 feet/sec and light travels at 186,300 miles per sec, we see  the lightning first and then wait to hear the thunder. \n\nThe difference in time between an observer seeing the lightning and hearing the thunder is based on that difference and the distance from the source of the lightning. \n\nFor example, if we see the lightning and then one second later we hear the thunder, the lighting occured at about 1000 feet away from our location.  Five seconds would be approx. one mile away.  The farther away it is, the greater the time difference will be.  \n\nThunder is caused by the super-heating of the air molecules that are conducting the electrical energy.  As Electricity flows, it heats up the air causing it to superheat locally.  This heating causes a sonic boom to occur.