The Speed of Light and Sound Experiment

When I was in school my physics teacher did an awesome experiment that I've always remembered.  We went outside to the fields.  He stood at one end of the field, and we were all the way down at the other end.  At the same time, he waved a flag down and shot a starting pistol, and we timed the difference between us watching the flag fall and us finally hearing the sound of the pistol.  The purpose of that experiment was to measure the speed of sound.

However, that was high school.  This is middle school.  And this is a middle school that doesn't happen to have starting pistols in our supply closet.

But I still wanted to do a cool experiment that would help my kids better remember that light is much, much, faster than sound.  Sure, I could tell them and show them the numbers, but that's not going to be as memorable.

Today's Mini-Experiment:

Question: Do light waves or sound waves travel faster?

Hypothesis: I hypothesize that _________ travel faster than _________. (modified hypothesis outline)

Experiment: I watched a video about lightning and thunder. (they loved watching all of these lightning strikes.  I enjoyed it, too.)

Movie is 1:49 minutes long.

Conclusion: My hypothesis stated that _____________.  My results do/do not support my hypothesis.  The results show ___(that light travels faster than sound)___ because, ___(light does not require a medium).  

I had to give them the "because" statement, but we had a discussion on what it meant.  I realized that although we had talked about the word "medium" before, and that sound needs solid/liquid/gas to travel through, they still were unsure on the vocab word.  So I write down "Math Medium" and "Science Medium" on the board.  The math medium means in the middle.  The science medium means matter that something is traveling through.  

I think they understood what I was trying to say.  They were at least able to regurgitate some sort of explanation to their partners during "Partner Teach."

This only took 20-30 minutes depending on questions and initial level of understanding.  The kids did their entire write-ups.  I haven't graded them yet, but they looked pretty good from what I saw.