The Firecracker Effect
Sitting on a terrace, glazing at a clear night sky, one may be granted the visual euphoria that a well-orchestrated set of firecrackers fills its fortunate audience with. It’s an event of an importance much greater than what meets the eye. Given that the scenario allows for the viewer to be remarkably faraway from the firecrackers’ ground, one might take another note: the stimuli come in parts.
Physics has come a long way to explain how light is significantly faster than sound; and to that we can base the aforementioned observation. When the subject’s viewpoint is far enough from the position of the object, which makes the differences between light’s and sound’s speeds noticeable to the naked eye, remarkable sights can occur.
Colourful aerial blasts, however, are not the only happening that is transmitted to the observer in waves, each of which has its own pace and speed.
People must not rush to judge a phenomenon just by its direct effect; especially when it comes to other people, for that makes them both poor observers and needlessly severe judges. It’s not at all uncommon to see people making incorrect decisions based upon equally unstable data, which, in turn, are based upon doubtful observations. This chaotically mistaken cycle of misconception leaves, ipso facto, the human mind vulnerable to countless errors that downgrade its intellectual caliber, as well as its efficiency as a tool of judgement, thus, making its level of conscious less significant that what it should be.
Arguments, misunderstandings, wrongful accusations. These are just some of the few results that an individual may be led to, if they chose no to apply the Rule of Physics at hand. Maybe, though, the reason why many people have failed to follow this admittedly simple principle that Science blesses us with is because they see it as something complex since it contains terms like “light”,”sound”,”speed” etc. Of course, the reader will have noticed, by now, that taking things that literally isn’t exactly this Story’s pace. Rather, this rule would be better off labeled as one of Thumb, rather than Physics, or any other Science field for that matter. Seeing it as it is and appreciating it for it’s wide applicability, as well as its ease in use, is what people should be doing. Perhaps, Science, in its quests to unravel some of the Universe’s most mysterious wonders, has become a bit incomprehensible, even scary, to the masses, but that’s should not stop any individual from utilizing its laws in their basic and simplified form.
If you take the time to explain the above example of the fireworks to a person unfamiliar with most of the ideas that Science represents, it is most probable that it will eventually understand why it sees the fireworks first (light) and hears them shortly afterwards (sound). Moving the very same tactic a step further, any soul that is burdened with misjudgment — or inability to correctly define its surroundings in general — can be benefited in the same way: If one finds Physics’ theories too complex for their preferences, they don’t have but to recall the imaginary sight of the bursts exploding in the night sky, which approach them first in imagine and then in sound. That way they’ll never forget to easily apply what once seemed to them as a tool exclusively for specialized professionals in white robes.
See, everything can be connected with each other. Even — if not especially — when the elements at hand seem un-fusable, at first glance. That’s why the reader was hitherto reading a story which content was, at times, slightly poetic, at other, scientific and talked about how a set of fireworks can improve human judgement and social relations.
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