Sight and Sound

I  went out with the rest of my town to the park to watch the Fourth of July fireworks this weekend. I know, no need to tell me. Fourth of July isn’t until next weekend.

That’s just how we do things around here.

We got a  preview of the light show many of you won’t get to see for days.

Friday night’s show started a little early because a storm was blowing in. The colorful explosions of black powder and stars competed for splendor with the lightshow God put on. Lightning tore open the curtains more than once on the stage the volunteer firefighters built in the heavenlies.

The beauty of the thing was interrupted now and again by the equilibrium tipping sense that the audio and video tracks were not aligned, not unlike seeing the actor’s mouth move first and words follow later in an old late night rerun.

The light burst open, sprayed out and sometimes nearly faded into the night sky before combustion’s crack pounded across the lake.

The soundtrack lagged lazily behind.

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I am so not a scientist. I can unravel the mysteries of an insurance policy contract. I can dissect medical records. I can tell you about res ipsa and strict liability and insurable interest all day long (though I’d have to wake you when I was done). But I can’t tell you much about how light travels faster than sound. And what might make one or the other travel even faster or slower than usual.

It had me curious. Curious enough to do a little Googling. I spent enough time on a physics forum to know I don’t belong there. My head hurt reading about advection, vector sums, flow fields, velocity, inertia, Mach numbers, Mach angles and Doppler effects.

In the end, the answer to my question Does the wind affect the speed at which sound travels? was a resounding Maybe.

It depends on who you ask.

The scientists in the forum were divided. But I’m good with Maybe.

It gives me enough wiggle room to go with the answer I wanted.

The wind — and other atmospheric conditions — sometimes makes it harder to hear. And if you ask the right guy, he’ll tell you it also extends the lag time between what we see and what we hear.

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I find the audio delay to be something of a constant in my life. I see long before I hear. And long before I understand.

God moves.

And I see it.

But I don’t get it.

It takes a while for what He’s saying to me to catch up to what He’s doing.

And I wonder if it has something to do with the wind.

The wind that blows His voice back, away from my rebellious ears. The wind that whisks His voice away just before it reaches me. The wind that all by itself drowns out His sweet words that sometimes clap like thunder while other times brush past me as no more than a whisper.

The wind and noise.

They pulled the explosive sound of fireworks away from spectacular flashes of light.

The wind.

The noise.

The distractions and disturbances that keep me from hearing Him speak.

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