Let’s face it — engineers see a lot of numbers in their everyday jobs. While generally comfortable with math and numbers, I doubt many of us take the time to actually visualize what those numbers actually mean.
The speed of light is a great example. Every engineer knows that it’s 299,792,486 m/s^2. In more common (for us Americans) terms, it’s about 186,000 miles per second. But how fast is that, exactly?
Well, the moon is a good example. While really close to Earth in astronomical units, it would be a pretty long walk to reach there, if such a journey were possible. But humans have been to the moon and around the far side. It’s as far as we’ve ever managed to travel in one journey. So how far is it, in relation to the speed of light?
Visualizing the numbers we work with