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Sound travels at about 330 metres per second; light travels so fast that it arrives almost instantaneously. If you time the gap between a flash of lightning and its clap of thunder as 6 seconds, roughly how far away is the storm?

If you liked this problem, here is an NRICH task which challenges you to use similar mathematical ideas.

 

This problem is taken from the UKMT Mathematical Challenges.

You can find more short problems, arranged by curriculum topic, in our short problems collection.