Ernstein: What Goofballs Sound Like at the Speed of Light

The Medical Drama and Mathematical Melodrama:

My wife and I were sitting in a doctor's exam room waiting for medical results on 9/11 of 2007. I begin a cell phone conversation with my son, an engineering student. As part of the conversation I mention that since her recent surgery, his mother thinks everything tastes too salty, including my humor. My son thinks that is pretty funny (the my humor part). It is rare that he ever tells me anything of mine is very funny. I tell him that I wrote that line several hours ago but that I had waited to tell his mother that line until I could also tell him simultaneously.

Then I suddenly realize this physical reality and numeric similarity:

i) My wife's closest ear is approximately 100 centimeters away from my mouth

ii) My mouth is maybe a couple centimeters from my cellphone microphone

iii) My son's ear is roughly a centimeter away from his cellphone speaker

iv) My son is approximately 100 miles away from me

And then I wonder: Who heard it first?

Non-Geek Warning: Don't Try to Understand This Next Paragraph

The Dilemma of the Digital Delay: I had tried for simultaneousness only to realize that maybe my son who is far away physically may actually have heard the sound of my joke before my wife based on the speed of sound versus the speed of light/electricity. My thought is I am unsure of how much delay is created in the cell phone circuits as the electrical signal is periodically re-amplified at various stages of the transmission process, goes through telephone switching circuits, possible digital information buffering, multiplexing, and undergoes Analog to Digital & Digital to Analog conversion at each transducer step.

My son's response: "Dad, you're a goofball"

My wife's response: "Get off the phone, the doctor's coming"

For everyone out there who has been anxiously waiting for the more important information, the doctor's news was good about my wife.

My Phone-y Numerical Results Later in the Evening:

The son 100 miles away heard the sound 5 times sooner than the wife 100 centimeters away.

Reach out and hug someone. Faster. By phone.

Appendix: Calculations for Goofballs & Geeks & Nerds

Here is the time delay for the speed of sound to travel 100 cm:

Speed of sound at 70 F : 771 mph

I didn't try to compensate for our elevation of ~3000 ft above sea level

100 cm / 2.54 cm/in = 39.37 in = 3.281 ft

771 mph * 5280 ft/mile = 4070880 ft per hour (speed of sound at 70 F) from a web site

1129 ft per second

3.281 ft / 1129 ft per sec.. 0.002906 seconds to travel 100 cm

Here is the time delay for the speed of light to travel 100 miles:

Speed of light 186,282 miles per second

100 miles * 1 / 186282 seconds per mile = 0.000536 seconds, so around a half a millisecond to travel 100 miles.

So if there is citizen of cyberchatland who knows more about this subject than me, or would like to confirm my physics and math or correct for gross errors, please comment.