Expulsion speed44.7 m/s
1.66Thrown footballs
149 billionthsLight speeds
2,235Typing fingers
~100 mph peak; some studies report 4.5-42 m/s range
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
A Sneeze
An involuntary explosion at 100 mph from your face/Events & Phenomena
A sneeze is a semi-autonomous neurological event that propels air, mucus, and roughly 40,000 droplets from your nose and mouth at speeds up to 100 mph. You cannot sneeze with your eyes open (well, you can, but it takes effort and they definitely will not pop out). A sneeze generates a brief but surprisingly large force in the chest cavity, and the spray can travel up to 8 meters. After 2020, we all became painfully aware of this last fact.
Measurements
Force generated40 N
8 hundredthsHigh-fives
4Zipper pulls
400 millionthsAnchor chains
Approximate peak force from the diaphragm and chest muscles
Duration1.5 tenths s
600 millionProcessor cycles
5 thousandthsPrinter warm-up cycles
100 millionthsPomodoro timers
~150 milliseconds from initiation to completion
Kinetic energy of expelled air1 J
3.5 quintillionRed photons
667 trillionthsFalcon 9 landings
1.9 millionthsHighway car crashes
Approximate; enough energy to feel, not enough to power anything useful
Droplet travel distance8 m
9.88Skateboard lengths
2.92Pool tables
Large droplets can travel up to 8 m in still air; MIT study 2014
Air volume expelled1.5 thousandths m³
5 hundredthsLarge watermelons
1.5Human stomachs
~1.5 liters of air per sneeze