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3 years ago via Twitter

What is the approximate speed of light ?

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wdawe | 3 years ago view on twitter
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300,000 kilometers per second. To a little more precision 299,792,458 m/s according to Google calculator.
source(s):
Burned into my brain in Physics class.

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rickg | 3 years ago Report

It wasn't a criticism, merely additional info (or pedantry, of which I have been accused once or twice :-)).

Really, 3x10^8 m/s is close enough for estimation purposes.

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wdawe | 3 years ago Report

The question was the approximate speed. So 299,792,458 m/s is also approximately correct. I remember the good old days when a metre was a thing you could pick up and hold in your hand. :-) :-)

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wdawe | 3 years ago Report

I didn't take it as a criticism, I should have put a couple of smilies on my comment to show that it was taken as good natured banter and my response was in kind. Feel free to be pedantic on my answers anytime, I'm tough, I can take it. :-)

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rickg | 3 years ago Report

One small nitpick: One should note that this is the speed of light in a vacuum. Light is slowed when passing through a transparent material such as air, glass or water.

And one small additional fact: The meter is now defined by the speed of light. That is, that speed of light you cite above (299,792,458 m/s) is absolutely exact. The meter is the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458 s, exactly. Because we can measure time intervals with extreme precision using atomic clocks, this makes the meter definition very precise indeed.

See this site for a history of the definition of the meter: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/meter.html

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buddawiggi | 3 years ago view on twitter
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The right answers are here, but as a unit of measure I would add it is 1 Planck speed & as a part of an equation it appears as c (speed of light).
A good aprox is: 2.998x10^8 m/s (meters per second) and this is the accepted exact number in meters per second:
299,792,458 m/s

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