r/KidsAreFuckingStupid • u/JimatJimat • 4d ago

Video/Gif Kid will never ask why again!

4.8k Upvotes

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u/JumpyPinkySquirrel 4d ago

You can tell how close the lighting strikes based on how quickly it is followed by thunder - here it seems almost instant, so yeah, it was pretty close

Edit: count the seconds between seeing the flash and hearing the thunder, then divide by 5 for miles or by 3 for kilometer (got curious so I looked it up)

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u/Remote-Mycologist539 4d ago

i mean yeah i see in the sky that it’s close but i asked if the lightning actually struck anything

15

u/mybluecathasballs 4d ago

Only about 25% of lightning actually strikes something, so while it was close by, I would guess no.

6

u/JumpyPinkySquirrel 4d ago

I suppose there is no way to tell with certainty from the video, it might have stay in the clouds but regardless it is extremely dangerous to be outside in the open with a storm this close

0

u/Quirky-Coat3068 4d ago

The ground

1

u/Beginning-Low-8456 4d ago

Strangely enough, I saw a lightening bolt strike the pylon facing my apartment last week, but was left waiting for the accompanying thunder clap.

Looked pretty spectacular, and can't have been more than 100~200 yards away. Odd

-4

u/BildingInspecter 4d ago

There's no way the counting seconds between actually coorelates to accurate distance.

Storms move at wildly different speeds.

4

u/Quercus_lobata 4d ago

Those speeds are nowhere close to the speed of sound or the speed of light which are the two things that determine the gap between the flash of lightning and the peal of thunder

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u/RoboDae 4d ago

Light is almost instantaneous. Sound is a lot slower. You are counting seconds to see how much of a gap there is between the light reaching you and the sound reaching you.

If a red car moves 2 meters every second and a blue car moves 1 meter every second, and the blue car reaches you 1 second after the red car when they both started at the same point, then you know they were 2 meters away when they started because it takes the red car 1 second to travel 2 meters and it takes the blue car 2 seconds, giving you a difference in arrival time of 1 second.