Talk:2027: Lightning Distance

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 15:44, 1 August 2018 by Condor70 (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search


Calculations I used:

t1=s/v1

t2=s/v2

Substract:

t1-t2=dt=s/v1-s/v2=(s*v2-s*v1)/(v1*v2)=s*(v2-v1)/(v1*v2)=s*dv/(v1*v2)

Therefore

s=(dt*v1*v2)/dv

I evaluated (v1*v2)/dv and it came to be 13.6 billion. Can someone verify it's correct? 172.68.51.112 13:08, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I used refractive index for visible light of 1.000277 (air at STP as opposed to 0C 1atm) and arrived at around 7.9 billion instead. Refractive index of 1.000337 is then required for the radio waves for the comic to be correct. 172.68.11.221 13:46, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Do you mean 7.9 billion to convert to miles or to kilometers? Because my 13.6 bilion is to kilometers.
I'm sure the actual comic is referring to miles and 5 billion was picked to match with the "divide by five" rule for miles. 172.69.70.131 13:59, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
I did mean kilometers. If we use miles, 1.000314 fits almost precisely! (5.04 billion) 172.68.11.17 14:42, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

If you can count several seconds, as is suggested in the comic, the flash is still billions of miles away, the widest possible distance between Earth and Neptun is about 5 billion km. Sebastian --172.68.110.40 14:51, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Doe you really need to know the spectrum of the flash? If we assume that a flash contains UV and X-ray radiation and that the visible light is generated at the same time as the UV or X-ray radiation then you only need to know the refractive index of light/UV/X-ray in air under the same temperature conditions and not the exact spectrum. Condor70 (talk)