How much distance will the light from a flashlight travel?

Answer 1

If given the chance, light will travel in every direction it can in a straight line till it meets a solid object or cloud. Light from stars hit the earth that are milllions of light years away. So the true answer is unknown.

Answer 2

Do the math. Seconds in an hour 3600.times 24 = 86400secs in a day.

86400 times 300,000km per second = 25,920,000,000 kilometers a day.

Or 25 billion nine hundred and twenty million kilometers per day.

A kilometer is one thousand meters. A meter is 39 inches. For the metrically challenged: [When I was in high school, 1964-1968, [US] preparing to join the world in the use of the metric system was all the rage. Even my father was working on learning the system. Somehow, the rage went down in a whimper...] Light travels at an estimated 186,000 miles per second. Multiplying this by 86,400 seconds in a day, we get 16,070,400,000 miles in one day-- as if the figure in miles is any more easy to comprehend than the figure in kilometers... even these very humble astronomical distances are far beyond our practical grasp: 16 billion 70 million four hundred thousand miles.

For those interested in a more precise figure: 16,094,764,800 ( 16 billion, 94 million, 764 thousand, 800 miles ) per day, based upon a speed of 186,282 miles per second ( approximate speed of light in a vacuum ).

Answer 3

The same way light travels to the bowl of chips in your hand from the light bulb on the ceiling,
and the same way the signal travels across the room to the TV from the remote control in your hand.

Come to think of it ... the same way the picture travels across the room to your eyes from the TV screen !

Answer 4

Light is electromagnetic radiation. It travels from the sun to Earth in exactly the

same way that the signal travels from the cellphone tower to the gadget in your

pocket, the light travels from the bulb to the book you're reading, the 11:00 news

travels from the TV station to your house, and the heat travels from the toaster-coil

to the bread.

Answer 5

This obviously depends on the type of flashlight, its power source, and the atmospheric conditions that exist. Some very bright lights can be seen to the horizon at night, while others can only be seen up to a mile away.

There are three things that limit the effective distance of a flashlight.

-- The first is scattering or absorption by particles in the air, such as smoke, dust, sand, rain, or fog. The beam contacts more and more of these as it travels.

-- The second is refraction by water vapor or by different air temperatures. These can bend the light so that it spreads in other directions.

-- The third is the basic divergence of a beam with distance. Although some beams, such as lasers, are very coherent, with all of the photons travelling practically parallel paths, almost no beams are exactly parallel. The farther the beam travels, the wider the area it will cover, so less light will reach any particular observer.

If you were to point a flashlight straight up into space, there is a chance that several of the photons might travel on a course parallel to each other. If they were not blocked by dust, air molecules, or cosmic particles, they could conceivably travel a huge distance through space and be detected millions of light years away. However, they would likely be too few. Stars throw out many trillions of photons every second, and at a great distance only a few hundred travel on a path to Earth.

Answer 6

The term "light year" derives from the distance light travels in a year at approximately 3.0 x 108m/s or 186,000 miles/s. That distance is equal to about 9.46 x 1012 km or 5.9 x 1012 miles.

Light travels about 9.46 trillion kilometers in a lightyear.

Answer 7

The Sun doesn't move, the Earth does. Watching The Sun traverse across the sky, you'll see it go from east to west.

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Answer 8

Light has been moving away from the Sun since it's creation around 4.6 billion years ago. It's light has been moving into the Universe since then at the speed of light.

Answer 9

The distance from Sun to Earth is 150 million kilometers.. . . . . It takes

approximately 81/3 minutes for the suns rays to reach earth.

Answer 10

The distance between the sun and earth is about 8.3 light minutes.