How fast is sound?
The 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 (68 °F), the speed of sound in air is about 343 metres per second (1,235 km/h; 1,125 ft/s; 767 mph; 667 kn), or a kilometre in 2.9 s or a mile in 4.7 s. It depends strongly on temperature as well as the medium through which a sound wave is propagating. At 0 °C (32 °F), the speed of sound is about 331 metres per second (1,192 km/h, 741 mph).
How fast does sound travel?
However, the speed of sound varies from substance to substance: typically, sound travels most slowly in gases, faster in liquids, and fastest in solids. For example, while sound travels at 343 m/s in air, it travels at 1,481 m/s in water (almost 4.3 times as fast) and at 5,120 m/s in iron (almost 15 times as fast).
What type of sound wave is found only in solids?
Sound waves in solids are composed of compression waves (just as in gases and liquids), and a different type of sound wave called a shear wave, which occurs only in solids. Shear waves in solids usually travel at different speeds, as exhibited in seismology.
How does temperature affect sound?
Since temperature (and thus the speed of sound) decreases with increasing altitude up to 11 km, sound is refracted upward, away from listeners on the ground, creating an acoustic shadow at some distance from the source. The decrease of the speed of sound with height is referred to as a negative sound speed gradient .
What is the main factor that affects the speed of sound?
In the Earth's atmosphere, the chief factor affecting the speed of sound is the temperature . For a given ideal gas with constant heat capacity and composition, the speed of sound is dependent solely upon temperature; see Details below. In such an ideal case, the effects of decreased density and decreased pressure of altitude cancel each other out, save for the residual effect of temperature .
How can sound transmission be illustrated?
The transmission of sound can be illustrated by using a model consisting of an array of spherical objects interconnected by springs.
What is the speed of sound in an ideal gas?
The speed of sound in an ideal gas depends only on its temperature and composition. The speed has a weak dependence on frequency and pressure in ordinary air, deviating slightly from ideal behavior. In colloquial speech, speed of sound refers to the speed of sound waves in air.
Why does sound travel faster in solid medium?
Sound travel faster in solid medium because molecules in a solid medium are much closer together than those in a liquid or gas medium, allowing sound waves travel more quickly through it.
Why is sound faster in liquid or solid?
Solid >Liquid>Gas . because solids have highest density . Hence speed of sound is fastest in the densest material.
How fast does light travel in a vacuum?
The fastest light goes in a vacuum is 180,000mps, or 300,000kps. That's a vacuum, so, no medium is needed because light is a self propagating electronic-magnetic wave that sustains itself. But it does bend and slow down slightly as it entered mediums. Unlike light, sound can't self propagate, as it is pressure waves in a medium. I brought up light because they share a property; they bend and change their speed depending on the medium that they enter. With light, a vacuum is it's best environment for speed. As it enters mediums and comes into contact with atoms, the atoms absorb the light and d
How do waves travel?
Some waves travel their energy by going from one particle to the next. If the sound wave molecules are more closer together, then which logical medium would they travel the fastest through? Solids, more denser mediums.
How fast is Beryllium?
Beryllium tops a standard list at 12,890 m/s. You can search the web to find a higher speed of sound.
Which waves travel the quickest?
Sound waves travel the quickest in solids. As there are more particles in the solid, the pressure wave ie the sound wave can travel through it with a greater speed. As more particles vibrate, the easier it is for the sound energy to travel. Hence, sound travels the fastest in solids
Does speed of sound have a connection to efficiency of propagation?
Next, the speed of sound as such has no connection to the efficiency of propagation. What counts are gradients (differences) in effective sound velocity.
How fast can sound travel?
The team found that at its fastest, sound can travel at 36 km (22.4 mi) per second.
What medium lets sound travel at such a high speed?
So what medium lets sound travel at such a high speed? According to the new study, it’s solid atomic hydrogen. This form of the element only occurs under immense pressure, such as that found at the core of gas giant planets like Jupiter. Under those conditions, hydrogen is compressed into a metallic solid that can easily conduct electricity – and, it turns out, sound.
Does sound travel faster in solid hydrogen?
One prediction made by the theory is that the speed of sound should decrease with the mass of the atom, so by extension sound should travel fastest in solid atomic hydrogen. The team used quantum mechanical calculations to test just how fast it would move through the material, and found that the speed is close to the theoretical fundamental limit.
Can we improve our understanding of fundamental constants and limits?
Besides being fascinating, this kind of study might not have all that much impact on our everyday lives, but the team says that improving our understanding of these fundamental constants and limits can improve our models for a range of sciences.
Overview
The 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 (68 °F), the speed of sound in air is about 343 metres per second (1,125 ft/s; 1,235 km/h; 767 mph; 667 kn), or one kilometre in 2.91 s or one mile in 4.69 s. It depends strongly on temperature as well as the medium through which a sound wave is propagating. At 0 °C (32 …
History
Sir Isaac Newton's 1687 Principia includes a computation of the speed of sound in air as 979 feet per second (298 m/s). This is too low by about 15%. The discrepancy is due primarily to neglecting the (then unknown) effect of rapidly-fluctuating temperature in a sound wave (in modern terms, sound wave compression and expansion of air is an adiabatic process, not an isothermal process). This error was later rectified by Laplace.
Basic concepts
The transmission of sound can be illustrated by using a model consisting of an array of spherical objects interconnected by springs.
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 energ…
Equations
The speed of sound in mathematical notation is conventionally represented by c, from the Latin celeritas meaning "velocity".
For fluids in general, the speed of sound c is given by the Newton–Laplace equation:
where
• Ks is a coefficient of stiffness, the isentropic bulk modulus (or the modulus of bulk elasticity for …
Dependence on the properties of the medium
The speed of sound is variable and depends on the properties of the substance through which the wave is travelling. In solids, the speed of transverse (or shear) waves depends on the shear deformation under shear stress (called the shear modulus), and the density of the medium. Longitudinal (or compression) waves in solids depend on the same two factors with the addition of a dependence on compressibility.
Altitude variation and implications for atmospheric acoustics
In the Earth's atmosphere, the chief factor affecting the speed of sound is the temperature. For a given ideal gas with constant heat capacity and composition, the speed of sound is dependent solely upon temperature; see § Details below. In such an ideal case, the effects of decreased density and decreased pressure of altitude cancel each other out, save for the residual effect of temperature.
Details
For an ideal gas, K (the bulk modulus in equations above, equivalent to C, the coefficient of stiffness in solids) is given by
Thus, from the Newton–Laplace equation above, the speed of sound in an ideal gas is given by
where
Effect of frequency and gas composition
The medium in which a sound wave is travelling does not always respond adiabatically, and as a result, the speed of sound can vary with frequency.
The limitations of the concept of speed of sound due to extreme attenuation are also of concern. The attenuation which exists at sea level for high frequencies applies to successively lower frequencies as atmospheric pressure decreases, or as the mean free path increases. For this rea…