When the time interval between seeing the lightening and hearing the thunder is short, the thounder is loud. Why?

1 Answer
Mar 10, 2018

It means the thunder is closer to you...and that's why it is louder.

Explanation:

Whenever there is lightening in the sky an associated Thunder sound is produced.

However the speed of light being large about 3x10^8 m/s the light flash is seen almost instantaneously.

As an example:

even if the distance is say 3300 meters from us the time taken for the light will be a tiny fraction of second about 10^-5 seconds.

But the Thunder sound takes longer time to come ..its speed in air is approx. 330 m/s.

Take again the distance as 3300 meter then it takes 10 seconds to reach us.

so an interval of 10 seconds will be observed between seeing the light and hearing the thunder.

If the time interval is small then the lightening with thunder must
be happening at closer distance from us.

And if the thunder is happening closer its Intensity will be larger as the intensity of sound wave reduces as (1/distance^2 .)

If its closer means distance is smaller therefore intensity/loudness will be larger.