If you hear thunder 36 seconds after you see a flash of lightning how far away is the thunderstorm?

Answer 1

About 12 kilometers (7.45 miles). After you see a bolt of lightning, for every 3 seconds until you hear the thunder, it means it is one kilometer away (3 seconds = 1 kilometer). This is because the sound wave created by the lightning is traveling at about 330 m/sec (in dry air, the speed of sound is about 343 m/sec or 1127 ft/sec).

You can also divide by 5 to determine the approximate number of miles. In this case it would be calculated as about 7.2 miles away.

Answer 2

One way is to count the seconds from a lightning strike until you hear the thunder and then divide the number by five. This supposedly tells you how many miles the storm is from your location. This is because the sound is only moving 1100 ft/sec. Every 5 seconds is about a mile, or every 3 seconds is a kilometer.

If you can't see a flash, you can still time the distance with a radio. Lightning creates radio waves. so you should hear a burst of static on your radio whenever lightening strikes in your general area. You can count the seconds from the time you hear the static until you hear the thunder, divide by five and find out how about far away the storm is (in miles).

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A more precise method that is not any more accurate.

Thunder travels at the speed of sound, which is 344 meters per second.

To tell how far away a thunderstorm is just count the seconds from the time you see the lightning flash until you hear the thunder.

Multiply the seconds by 344 metres and you have the distance of the storm from your position.

(although here the meter value is more precise, you cannot measure the time in hundredths of a second, and so the margin of error is just as great)

Answer 3

to know approx. how far the lightning is from where you are, the first step to do is, by the time you see the lightning the "light" start counting like this, one one thousand, two two thousand, three three thousand and so on until you hear the rumbling sound and for ex. you stopped at 5 5000, it means that the lightning is 5miles away from where you are. . .

Answer 4

First of all, thunder is a sound, you can't tell how far away it is until you hear it.

I'm assuming that you meant "How do you know how far away lightning is?" One of the well known ways to tell is counting the # of seconds between when you see the lightning to when you hear the thunder. You can multiply the # of seconds that you count by 0.2 and you'll get the distance in miles. For every 5 seconds that you count, the bolt struck 1 mile further away. So if you counted 15 seconds between the time you saw the lightning you when you heard the thunder, that bolt was 3 miles away.

Answer 5

There have been many ways put forward, this is the actual accurate method. Start counting once you see lightning, and stop counting once you hear the number. When thunder and lightning occur at the same time, the storm is directly overhead. Now keep in mind the number. For every five seconds that pass between lightning and thunder, the storm is one mile away. So if you get fifteen, for example, the storm is three miles away.

Answer

Just keep in mind that if you are swimming and you can see lightning, it is time to get out. Lightning can travel several miles.

Answer 6

The speed of light is measured to be 299792458 m/s and the speed of sound is approximately 340.29 m/s at sea level (at higher altitudes it is slower). If we approximate that light travels at 300 000 000 m/s and sound travels at 300 m/s, then it's obvious that light is 1000 000 times faster. Light is so fast, just think that it's instantaneous.

In every second, sound is able to travel up to 340 m. Let's just use the figure of 330m to help with the calculations.

In 3 seconds, the sound has been able to travel (3x330=990) about 1000m or 1km.

In 5 seconds, sound is able to travel (5x330=1650m) about 1600m or 1 mile.

Using algebra, speed(v) = meters(m) / second(s). Or, meters = speed * second (v*s = m).

So "330m/s * [Counted seconds]s = distance in meters."

Answer 7

Count the number of seconds between when you see the lightning flash and when you first hear the thunder.

Sound travels at (about) 1100 feet per second, so very 5 seconds between the flash and the sound, represents one mile between you and the lightning strike.

Answer 8

The speed of sound in air is roughly 1,100 feet per second, depending on the temperature and a few other atmospheric factors. A good approximation of the distance to a thunder clap is one mile for every five seconds after seeing the lightning flash.

Answer 9

When you see flashing lighning count the seconds until you hear the thunder, think how many seconds you counted tell u how many miles away the storm is : remember for every five seconds you count the storm is 1 mile away

Answer 10

To tell you far away a thunderstorm is, count the seconds between the lightning strike and the clap of thunder. Thunder is the sound of lightning.