Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Animations Xplaned
Topics: World News, Science, YouTube, Social Media
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: World News, Science, YouTube, Social Media
People are flocking to social media astounded after a video revealed the difference in the speed of sound versus speed of light.
Let's be real. If you're not in a scientific field for your job, the last time you probably learnt about physics was probably before the age of 15 - and most of us don't even want to think about just how many years ago that was.
The speeds of sound and light can be confusing concepts to grapple with, but thankfully, a YouTuber has broken it down for us and viewers have been blown away by the video.
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The video - created and uploaded by YouTube user Animations Xplaned - goes into detail explaining and demonstrating with animation whether the speed of light is faster or slower than the speed or sound.
A note on the video adds: "Speed of sound is based on observations in dry air at 20°C. Speed of light is based on observations in vacuum. Distances between earth, sun and the moon vary throughout the year. The size and distance of the planets are to scale."
The video exemplifies how the speed of light is 'nearly instantaneous' - using a lightbulb switching on to demonstrate.
"Regardless of the distance between you and the light source, there is never a visible delay," the narrator adds.
Speed of sound may not seem too much slower, but if you break it down - like this video does - it is 'far' inferior in speed when compared to light.
The narrator explains: "You can experience this by being in a large open area, where you can hear the delay of your echo bouncing off distant rocks before it travels back to you."
To put it in perspective, the video measures how long it would take for a bullet to travel between the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California - 12,180 metres apart - because 'some nine millimeter bullets travel at the speed of sound'.
The bullet takes 3.7 seconds to reach from one tower to the next.
It then compares this to the speed of light which takes just 1.28 seconds to travel from earth to the moon - a monumentally larger distance than the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.
And the demonstration has left people blown away.
Flooding to the post - albeit not quite as fast as the speed of sound or light - people have been quick to show their appreciation for the explainer.
One YouTube user commented: "Just think how fast the speed of light is and how far light can travel continuously for a year. Now imagine traveling at the speed of light for decades and we’d barely be able to explore a portion of our galaxy. It’s just mind blowing how incomprehensibly large this universe is."
"What a fabulous representation! Thank you for the great learning tools," another user added.
A third wrote: "The amazing thing is, that on astronomical scales, even light is slow."