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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 1481 m/s in water (almost 4.3 times as fast) and at 5120 m/s in iron (almost 15 times as fast).
When sound is moving through a medium that does not have constant physical properties, it may be refracted (either dispersed or focused). [5] Spherical compression (longitudinal) waves. The mechanical vibrations that can be interpreted as sound can travel through all forms of matter: gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas.
An acoustic wave is a mechanical wave that transmits energy through the movements of atoms and molecules. Acoustic waves transmit through fluids in a longitudinal manner (movement of particles are parallel to the direction of propagation of the wave); in contrast to electromagnetic waves that transmit in transverse manner (movement of particles at a right angle to the direction of propagation ...
The speed of sound in any chemical element in the fluid phase has one temperature-dependent value. In the solid phase , different types of sound wave may be propagated, each with its own speed: among these types of wave are longitudinal (as in fluids), transversal , and (along a surface or plate) extensional .
In acoustics, Stokes's law of sound attenuation is a formula for the attenuation of sound in a Newtonian fluid, such as water or air, due to the fluid's viscosity.It states that the amplitude of a plane wave decreases exponentially with distance traveled, at a rate α given by = where η is the dynamic viscosity coefficient of the fluid, ω is the sound's angular frequency, ρ is the fluid ...
Sound waves propagating through a liquid at ultrasonic frequencies have wavelengths many times longer than the molecular dimensions or the bond length between atoms in the molecule. Therefore, the sound wave cannot directly affect the vibrational energy of the bond, and can therefore not directly increase the internal energy of a molecule.
A sound wave propagates through a material as a localized pressure change. Increasing the pressure of a gas or fluid increases its local temperature. The local speed of sound in a compressible material increases with temperature; as a result, the wave travels faster during the high pressure phase of the oscillation than during the lower pressure phase.
Output of a computer model of underwater acoustic propagation in a simplified ocean environment. A seafloor map produced by multibeam sonar. Underwater acoustics (also known as hydroacoustics) is the study of the propagation of sound in water and the interaction of the mechanical waves that constitute sound with the water, its contents and its boundaries.