Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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).
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 .
The speed of sound depends on the medium the waves pass through, and is a fundamental property of the material. The first significant effort towards measurement of the speed of sound was made by Isaac Newton. He believed the speed of sound in a particular substance was equal to the square root of the pressure acting on it divided by its density:
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 ...
where is the Laplace operator, is the acoustic pressure (the local deviation from the ambient pressure), and is the speed of sound. A similar looking wave equation but for the vector field particle velocity is given by
Kundt's tube is an experimental acoustical apparatus invented in 1866 by German physicist August Kundt [1] [2] for the measurement of the speed of sound in a gas or a solid rod. The experiment is still taught today due to its ability to demonstrate longitudinal waves in a gas (which can often be difficult to visualise).
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.
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 ...