Dear Diary Journal
I’ve decided to embark on taking notes of my daily activities in the hopes that I will one day become famous and these will hold some kind of monetary value…
Seriously though, I think a few minutes of this before I go to bed may help reinforce things I have learned. We’ll see I guess, or whatever…who cares. Ok…ah…I’ve been reading E=mc^2 by David Bodanis, and I have had the speed of light (represented in Einstein’s equation with the symbol c) put into some perspective. Mach 1 is well known as the speed of sound, comparatively, the speed of light is equal to Mach 900,000.
The example given in the book is that of an annoyingly loud person on the opposite side of a restaurant talking on the phone. Since phones use radio waves that travel at the speed of light, the person on the receiving end of the phone is hearing the speaker significantly earlier than you are from the other side of the restaurant.
I’ve personally noticed this when assisting at a school swimming carnival. The light signifying the beginning of a race can be seen well before the sound of the cap gun firing, both of which happened at the same time. The delay is admittedly minimal over such a short distance, but it is noticeable.
Well, this already feels productive. Hopefully, I will be able to fill this notebook (that I’m physically writing in, wasn’t until a day later I decided to post this online) on a consistent basis with interesting points I don’t want to forget easily. If nothing else, this should be therapeutic.
Zac Currell 