This is like "Why is up?" The speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second. The speed of sound is about 1100 feet per second. (The qualifiers are because there can be variations.) Why are they different? Why is one person a blonde and another a redhead? or one tall and another short? I think you most likely want to know something more about the media of transmission, perhaps.... The fact that light does not need a medium means that it can travel full tilt (and its fastest) in a vacuum. It actually can be slowed somewhat (although very slightly) through glass, etc... Sound, on the other hand, cannot travel without a medium, since it depends on a physical vibration. It literally causes each molecule to vibrate as it passes, and that's what you actually "hear" when those vibrations reach your ear. "Soundproofing" is actually the interruption of that path of vibrations, usually a spongy or "foamy" structure, so that the vibrations are repeatedly stopped on their path until they lose the energy that keeps them going (and THAT is an over-simplified explanation, but you get the idea.)

Light is an electromagnetic wave, as are radio, TV, infrared, and ulraviolet waves. They travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second. Sound is a pressure wave that travels thru air and other objects. It only becomes "sound" when it enters your ear and causes your ear drum to vibrate, which sends a signal to your brain, which it interprets as sound. The speed of the pressure wave is determined by the physical properties of the air or whatever other material that it's moving through.

Well, it pertains to stupid people. You know they look stupid, and then they open their mouths and then you hear they're stupid. Unless you speak to them over the phone before ever seeing them. Just kidding Ok, the answer is that light is a more fundamental thing than sound. Light is energy without matter traveling along empty spacetime. And as it has no matter to exist within, it must move with spacetime, no slower and no faster. And it turns out this is really fast. As fast as anything can be. Why this is amounts to a mathematical proof by induction. Everything known is currently moving at slower than the speed of light, and it is provable by the axioms of relativity that given a chunk of matter traveling at less than the speed of light, it takes infinite energy to accelerate it up TO the speed of light. So given finite energy and all known substance traveling less than the speed of light already, no known physical process can accelerate any sample of matter up to or beyond the speed of light. Sound, however, is a material property. It is merely the motion of this very matter trapped between -c and c, exclusive (not containing -c and c). It also depends on the material. Sound is much, much faster in a super-hard material than, say, air. As it is just a consequence of motion of the known particles of substantial duration (i.e. atoms) it is a process that is also trapped between -c and c. And as it turns out, as no known material is even NEARLY as hard as the limits imposed by relativity, the speed of sound is not just bounded below c in magnitude, it's really, really small by comparison.

i think sound travel faster

its approximatley both the same but i exmaine that sound is a meter faster

I know! this is a big problem for me in the mornings. The light always shows up too quickly!

That sum-bitch is fast!

So you can see a fat bird and get out of the way before she botty burps.

Sound relys on the movement of air particles, light does not.

Different wave lengths and light does not need air to travel so there is no resistance from the air.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound : "Sound is the vibration of matter, as perceived by the sense of hearing.[1] Physically, sound is vibrational mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound "Sound is a vibration that travels through an elastic medium as a wave. The speed of sound describes how much distance such a wave travels in a certain amount of time. In dry air with a temperature of 21 °C (70 °F) the speed of sound is 344 m/s (1230 km/h, or 770 mph, or 1130 ft/s). Although it is commonly used to refer specifically to air, the speed of sound can be measured in virtually any substance. The speed of sound in liquids and non-porous solids is much higher than that in air." So, sound is mechanical. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light: "Light, or visible light, is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is visible to the human eye (about 400–700 nm). In a scientific context, the word light is sometimes used to refer to the entire electromagnetic spectrum.[1] Light is composed of elementary particles called photons." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light : "The speed of light in free space (a vacuum) is an important physical constant usually denoted by the letter c. It is the speed of all electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, in free space. More generally, it is the speed of anything having zero rest mass.[1] In metric units, the speed of light in vacuum is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second (1,079,252,849 km/h).[2] The fundamental SI unit of length, the metre, has been defined since October 21, 1983, as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second; any increase in the measurement precision of the speed of light would refine the definition of the metre, but not alter the numerical value of c. The approximate value of 3×108 m/s is commonly used in rough estimates (the error is 0.07%). In imperial units, the speed of light is about 670,616,630.6 miles per hour or 983,571,056 feet per second, which is about 186,282.397 miles per second, or roughly one foot per nanosecond. See also the later section of this article at "Speed of light set by definition". The speed of light when it passes through a transparent or translucent material medium, like glass or air, is less than its speed in a vacuum. The ratio of the speed of light in the vacuum to the observed phase velocity is called the refractive index of the medium. See dispersion (optics). In general relativity c remains an important constant of spacetime, however the concepts of 'distance', 'time', and therefore 'speed' are not always unambiguously defined due to the curvature of spacetime caused by gravitation. When measured locally, light in a vacuum always passes an observer at c." And light is radiation. SO "sound is vibrational mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave" and "Light, or visible light, is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is visible to the human eye". Sound must travel through matter to be perceived by the human ear. Light does NOT. PLEASE don't quote me if this is for schoolwork. I don't know that my analysis would be correct enough for those purposes.

just a little!!!

absolutely.

Without a doubt.

I realise that you know, some people don't know stuff and stuff, and it's mean to be mean, I know that but... COME ON DUDE. You have the internet. You can write and read, I'm pretty sure that was around the time of my life when I learned that light was faster than sound, when I learned that we can't HEAR the sun but we can SEE it. This is the speed of light and sound we are talking about. So, after all that is said and done, you aren't serious, are you?

Yes... "In dry air at 20 °C (68 °F), the speed of sound is 343 m/s (1235 km/h, or 770 mph, or 1129 ft/s, or approximately 5 seconds per mile)." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound "The approximate value of 3×108 m/s is commonly used in rough estimates (the error is 0.07%). In imperial units, the speed of light is about 670,616,629.4 miles per hour or 983,571,056.4 feet per second (roughly one foot per nanosecond), which is about 186,282.397 miles per second." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

Light = about 186,282 miles per second Sound = about 770 miles per hour Soo....yea, definitely faster.

Yes, it does. By an order of lots. If light and sound were vehicles, sound would be a wind up car, light would be a rocket ship: puttaputtaputta versus zzzzzooooommmm!!!

Just a whole lot friend

Yep. All the numbers aside (which you can get from other answers), watch the next thunderstorm. When lightening strikes, you immediately see the flash of light, and then the sound of thunder arrives afterwards. Probably the best, most dramatic anyway, example which shows light travels faster than sound.