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by superjan 409 days ago
For those wondering: The rule thumb here is that light travels at one foot per nanosecond. 300 ns =0,3 μsec. Electricity is a bit slower but the same order of magnitude.
1 comments

And by a happy coincidence it turns out that audio does about one foot in one millisecond making light six orders of magnitude faster
About one foot sounds very american.
I’m in europe so I am all in on the metric system. But “about a foot” per nanosecond is so easy to remember, understand and reason about that it is worth the exception. If you prefer something European, think of a sheet of A4 printer paper: the long side is 29.7 cm. “One length of A4 per nanosecond” is within 1% of the actual value of the speed of light.
> But “about a foot” per nanosecond is so easy to remember

Well, but its also just wrong. Its 12.5% to low. Thats why "about one foot" sounded absolutely wrong to me.

The original comment used imperial measures, following comments kept to that for consistency.

To put things into proper units: speed of light in vacuum is approx 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight, and electricity in wires has a pace of similar magnitude, and sound in normal atmospheric conditions shuffles along at approx 2.1 megafurlongs per fortnight.