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The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. More simply, the speed of sound is how fast vibrations travel. At 20 °C (68 °F), the speed of sound in air, is about 343 m/s (1,125 ft/s; 1,235 km/h; 767 mph; 667 kn), or 1 km in 2.91 s or one mile in 4.69 s.
A sound speed gradient leads to refraction of sound wavefronts in the direction of lower sound speed, causing the sound rays to follow a curved path. The radius of curvature of the sound path is inversely proportional to the gradient. [2] When the sun warms the Earth's surface, there is a negative temperature gradient in atmosphere.
It is the property of sound that most determines pitch. [1] The generally accepted standard hearing range for humans is 20 to 20,000 Hz. [2] [3] [4] In air at atmospheric pressure, these represent sound waves with wavelengths of 17 metres (56 ft) to 1.7 centimetres (0.67 in).
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:
Such designations can be ambiguous; for example, "CST" can mean China Standard Time (UTC+08:00), Cuba Standard Time (UTC−05:00), and (North American) Central Standard Time (UTC−06:00), and it is also a widely used variant of ACST (Australian Central Standard Time, UTC+9:30). Such designations predate both ISO 8601 and the internet era; in ...
Audio engineers use dynamic range to describe the ratio of the amplitude of the loudest possible undistorted signal to the noise floor, say of a microphone or loudspeaker. [18] Dynamic range is therefore the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the case where the signal is the loudest possible for the system. For example, if the ceiling of a device ...
c is the speed of sound in the medium, which in air varies with the square root of the thermodynamic temperature. By definition, at Mach 1, the local flow velocity u is equal to the speed of sound. At Mach 0.65, u is 65% of the speed of sound (subsonic), and, at Mach 1.35, u is 35% faster than the speed of sound (supersonic).
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 ...