16 interesting facts about light
- Light is electromagnetic radiation, just like radiowaves, infrared radiation and x-rays.
- If you had a switch in your house that would turn on a lamp placed on the Moon, it would only take 1.28 seconds to light it up at a distance of 238,857 miles away.
- Even though light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second (in a vacuum), it takes it years to travel across the vast distances in space.
- Traveling at a speed of 186,282 miles/sec (299,792 Km/sec), it takes sunlight approximately 8 min and 20 sec to reach the Earth.
- It takes about 1.3 seconds for light or radio waves to reach us from the Moon.
- Pluto is so far away from the Sun, it takes sunlight 4.5 hours to get there.
- Nothing travels faster than light.
- Sunlight is able to penetrate ocean water to a depth of 240 ft.
- Light takes four and half years to travel to the nearest star (other than the Sun), 100,000 years to travel across the width of the galaxy.
- It is light, refracting through millions of droplets of water, which produces the rainbow.
- A light-year (the distance light travels in one year), equals about 6 trillion miles.
- Although Thomas Edison didn’t invent the first light bulb, he invented one that stayed on for more than a few seconds.
- 12 to 15 percent of the electricity used in a home is for lighting.
- Red, green and blue are the primary colours of light. Mixing them in various ways will make all other colours, including white.
- Heavy dust on a light bulb can block half the emitted light.
- Only 10% of the electricity is used when turning on an incandescent light while the other 90% is wasted as heat.
