“Dad, would clapping on the Moon make a sound?”
“Nope. You wouldn’t hear anything at all.”
“No way. It’s a clap, why wouldn’t it make a sound?”
“Sound can’t travel without air. Sound is really just a vibration passed along as air particles bump into each other. The moment your palms hit, they shake the air right there, and that shake ripples outward, air bumping air, all the way to your ears.”
“But the Moon doesn’t have air?”
“Basically none. So even if you clap, there’s no air there to shake in the first place, which means the vibration has nowhere to travel.”
“So it’s completely silent?”
“Astronauts say it’s the quietest place a living person has ever experienced. Quiet enough to hear your own heartbeat.”
“Then how do astronauts talk to each other in space?”
“There’s a radio inside the helmet that turns their voice into radio waves and sends it over. The sound itself isn’t crossing space, it’s transformed into a radio signal first.”
“Wow. So explosions wouldn’t make noise either?”
“Right, movies always give space explosions a big boom, but in real life it would be completely silent. No matter how huge the explosion, without air there’s nothing to carry the sound.”
“On the Moon, the loudest clap in the world turns into the quietest silence in the world.”
Your Turn Now
Share with someone today what you remember.
- What does sound need in order to travel?
- Why wouldn’t a clap make a sound on the Moon?
- How do astronauts talk to each other?
(Check when ready: 1. A substance like air. 2. There’s almost no air to carry the vibration. 3. A radio turns their voice into radio waves.)
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