How does sound and picture reach the T V at the same time?

Nowadays, any half awake ten year. old knows that light and sound travel at different speeds. Light is a speedy traveler and sound is a slowpoke. We know that the sound and the TV picture start out from the broadcasting station together and it is natural, very natural, to wonder how come the race is always a tie. For after many miles of travel, the sound and picture arrive on your TV screen together   or they should,

Light travels at about 186,300 miles a second and sound ambles along through ordinary air at about one mile in five seconds. This can be baffling, especially when we see a live telecast. We know that light brings us the picture and sound brings the words or music to our ears. We see our favorite weatherman, for example, while we hear the words he is saying. You can test this if you are a lip reader. So somehow the light and the sound ran the race from the studio to your TV screen in the same split second.

This makes you wonder about the old story of the hare and the tortoise. They entered a race and, of course, everyone expected the speedy hare to beat the slowpoke turtle. Not at all. Mr. Hare was a show off and from time to time he stopped, just to prove he could win without trying. He did this once too often and lost the race. Maybe the light carrying the TV picture stops now and then while the slowpoke sound proceeds at a non stop steady pace, No, this is not the explanation.

Both the picture and the sound are sent out from the broadcasting station on powerful electromagnetic waves. This is the same kind of speedy, invisible energy as sunlight, radar and radio.

Though on different wave lengths, it pulses forth from the studio antenna at about 186,300 miles a second   fast enough to whip around the equator seven and a half times in a second. This, however, it could not do because these electromagnetic waves fan out from their source in straight lines.

Cameras, microphones and all kinds of complicated instruments inside the studio modify the electromagnetic waves, much as you knit a design into a sweater The designs made by sounds and picture travel with the TV waves and are translated into the program on your TV screen.

Sounds and pictures arrive together because they travel as small changes in the TV waves that rush from the studio to your living room. Along the way, they too are invisible travelers, whipping along at the speed of light. Your TV set turns the designs made by sounds back into sounds and the designs made b y studio cameras back into pictures.