Light travels much faster than sound. One of the most classic examples is lightning. When lightning strikes, the first thing you see is a flash of lightning in the sky, while the sound of thunder is heard a few seconds later.
Light travels much faster than sound. One of the most classic examples is lightning. When lightning strikes, the first thing you see is a flash of lightning in the sky, while the sound of thunder is heard a few seconds later.
The following values for the speed of light and the speed of sound can be considered. As you can see, light is much faster than sound.
Speed of sound: 343 m/s
Speed of light: 300,000,000 m/s
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Looking at the numbers, it seems like a simple comparison, but the speed of light and the speed of sound depend on many factors. So comparing their speeds can be a bit more confusing.
Light travels faster in dispersed media such as air. This is because the electromagnetic waves that make up light can penetrate between particles in the medium. Sound, on the other hand, has to jump from one particle to another to move.
Light is electromagnetic field vibrations penetrating the medium. The speed of light reaches its maximum when it passes through a vacuum (a vacuum with no atoms or molecules) and is 300,000,000 m/s. However, this speed can vary in different environments.
Sound is the vibration of the medium. The speed of sound depends not only on the medium but also on other factors such as temperature and density. For example, the speed of sound in dry air at 20 °C is about 343 m/s. But when the temperature drops to 0 °C, the speed drops to 331 m/s. Sound cannot exist in a vacuum, so its speed cannot be measured in a vacuum.
As a result, it would not be correct to compare speeds without specifying a constant medium and other factors on which they depend. Light is faster than sound, but not always faster.
