Fly Bolt

August 17th, 2010 admin Leave a comment Go to comments

Fly Bolt
A person sees a lightning bolt pass close to an airplane that is flying in the distance.physics more in detail

A person sees a lightning bolt pass close to an airplane that is flying in the distance. The person hears thunder 6.0 s after seeing the bolt and sees the airplane overhead 11 s after hearing the thunder. The speed of sound in air is 1100 ft/s.
(a) Find the distance of the airplane from the person at the instant of the bolt. (Neglect the time it takes the light to travel from the bolt to the eye.)
____________ft
(b) Assuming that the plane travels with a constant speed toward the person, find the velocity of the airplane.
__________ ft/s
(c) Look up the speed of light in air, and defend the approximation used in (a).

The only way that I know of detecting how far away lightning is, is by measuring it by the speed of sound (the THUNDER.)

The speed of light is so fast 3*10^8 m/s as to be considered instantaneous. The transmission along the nerves from the eye to the brain take a lot longer than the transmission of the light from the plane/lightning to the eye.

Human depth perception can not determine how far away lightning is by sight. (Was it a small lightning bolt fairly close or a large lightning bolt far away?)

Thus, I challenge the initial statement about a person’s being able to determine how close the lightning was to the plane by sight… If it is a given, that’s a different story!
.
.

my review of the kingman ACS bolt and SHOCKTECH’S supa fly bolt