Speed of sound

Speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. At 20 °C the speed of sound in air is about 343 metres per second. In an exceptionally stiff material such as diamond, sound travels at 12,000 metres perSecond. This is about 35 times its speed in air and about the fastest it can travel under normal conditions.

About Speed of sound in brief

Summary Speed of soundSpeed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. At 20 °C the speed of sound in air is about 343 metres per second, or a kilometre in 2. 9 s or a mile in 4. 7 s. Speed of sound varies from substance to substance: typically sound travels most slowly in gases, faster in liquids, and faster still in solids. In an exceptionally stiff material such as diamond, sound travels at 12,000 metres perSecond, about 35 times its speed in air and about the fastest it can travel under normal conditions. Sir Isaac Newton’s 1687 Principia includes a computation of the speed as 979 feet per second. This is too low by about 15%. The discrepancy is due primarily to neglecting the effect of rapidly-fluctuating temperature in aSound wave. In a real material, the stiffness of the springs is known as the \”elastic modulus\”, and the mass corresponds to the material density. Given that all other things being equal, sound will travel slower in stiffer materials. For instance, nickel is 59 times faster than in bronze, due to the greater stiffness of nickel at about the same density. Some textbooks mistakenly state that the speed. of sound increases three times for three state of sound. This notion is illustrated by presenting data for sound with three different states of sound, since deuterium has similar properties but twice the density of nickel. At the same time, at the same compression-type-type, sound.

will travel faster in liquid gases than solids in liquids and faster in gases in liquids. In real material terms, the spheres represent the material’s molecules and the springs represent the bonds between them. Sound. passes through the system by compressing and expanding the springs, transmitting the acoustic energy to neighboring spheres. This helps transmit the energy in-turn to the neighboring sphere’s springs, and so on. As long as the spacing of the spheres remains constant, stiffer springsbonds transmit energy quicker, while larger spheres transmit theenergy slower. This is how sound can be understood using a model of an array of spherical objects interconnected by springs. In this model sound will be using this model to show how sound travels in sponges, for instance, about 1.5 times faster to the sponger sponged material than nickel. This can be illustrated by using the model of a sphere and springs to show that sound travels 41 times faster in light hydrogen gas than heavy hydrogen gas, since hydrogen is more difficult to compress than helium. In the real world, this can be done using the spring-like structure of a ball of atoms and molecules, and the spring bonds of the balls are known as’spokes’ This model can be used to show the difference between the stiffness and mass of a sponge and a sphere of atoms, and how sound travel in different materials can be calculated.