At the stand of a racetrack you notice smoke from the starters gun before you hear it fire Explain.
Light travels faster than sound.
Do you think the different speeds of light and sound might have anything to do with it? Think about it. Which travels faster?
The observation that you noticed smoke from the starters gun before hearing it fire at the racetrack stand can be explained by the difference in the speed of light and sound.
Light travels much faster than sound. The speed of light in air is approximately 299,792 kilometers per second, while the speed of sound in air is approximately 343 meters per second. This means that light travels at a speed almost a million times faster than sound.
When the starter's gun is fired, there is an ignition which generates smoke as a result of the burning gunpowder. The light from this ignition reaches your eyes almost instantaneously because of its high speed. However, the sound waves produced by the gun take some time to travel to your ears.
Since light reaches you faster than sound, you see the smoke before you hear the sound. The delay between seeing the smoke and hearing the sound depends on the distance between you and the firing spot. Every 343 meters of distance will cause a 1-second delay in the sound reaching your ears.
So, in this case, when you noticed the smoke from the starters gun before hearing it fire, it is because light traveled to your eyes faster than the sound traveled to your ears.