Example Problem #1a Find the speed of sound in air at: a) 23.

0 oC The only thing that you are given is the air temperature. Given: air temp = 23.0 o C The formula used is as follows:

[ the o C on the top and the o C on the bottom cancel and leave only m/s. ]

vof sound = 331.4 m/s + 13.8 m/s vof sound = 345.2 m/s
4 sig figs in part a) answer even though only three sig figs in air temp given. This is a case of multiplication/division combined with addition/subtraction. See: Sig Fig Rules

At normal atmospheric pressure and a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, a sound wave will travel at approximately 343 m/s; this is approximately equal to 750 miles/hour. While this speed may seem fast by human standards (the fastest humans can sprint at approximately 11 m/s and highway speeds are approximately 30 m/s), the speed of a sound wave is slow in comparison to the speed of a light wave. Light travels through air at a speed of approximately 300 000 000 m/s; this is nearly 900 000 times the speed of sound. For this reason, humans can observe a detectable time delay between the thunder and the lightning during a storm. The arrival of the light wave from the location of the lightning strike occurs in so little time that it is essentially negligible. Yet the arrival of the sound wave from the location of the lightning strike occurs much later. The time delay between the arrival of the light wave (lightning) and the arrival of the sound wave (thunder) allows a person to approximate his/her distance from the storm location. For instance if the thunder is heard 3 seconds after the lightning is seen, then sound (whose speed is approximated as 345 m/s) has traveled a distance of distance = v t = 345 m/s 3 s = 1035 m

If this value is converted to miles (divide by 1600 m/1 mi), then the storm is a distance of 0.65 miles away. Another phenomenon related to the perception of time delays between two events is an echo. A person can often perceive a time delay between the production of a sound and the arrival of a reflection of that sound off a distant barrier. If you have ever made a holler within a canyon, perhaps you have heard an echo of your holler off a distant canyon wall. The time delay between the holler and the echo corresponds to the time for the holler to travel the round-trip distance to the canyon wall and back. A measurement of this time would allow a person to estimate the one-way distance to the canyon wall. For instance if an echo is heard 1.40 seconds after making the holler, then the distance to the canyon wall can be found as follows: distance = v t = 345 m/s 0.70 s = 242 m

Wave Speeds
The propagation speeds of traveling waves are characteristic of the media in which they travel and are generally not dependent upon the other wave characteristics such as frequency, period, and amplitude. The speed of sound inair and other gases, liquids, and solids is predictable from their density and elastic properties of the media (bulk modulus). In a volume medium the wave speed takes the general form

This relationship works fairly well for water with tabulated values:

This agrees well with the measured speed of sound in water, 1482 m/s at 20C. The situation with solids is considerably more complicated, with different wave speeds in different directions, in different kinds of geometries, and differences between transverse and longitudinal waves. For example, a general tabulated value for the bulk modulus of steel gives a sound speed for structural steel of

Comparing to one tabulated example for stainless steel shows wide variation between the speed for longitudinal and transverse waves, with this calculated value somewhere in between.
Solved Examples
Question 1: Calculate the velocity of a water wave if the frequency is 400 Hz, the wavelength is 6 m, and the amplitude of the wave is 3.76 cm. Solution: We know that the distance travelled by the wave in one complete cycle is 6 m and it completes 400 cycles per second, so the velocity of the wave is given by; V = 400 6 V = 2400 m/sec; V = 2.4 Km/sec.

Question 2: A sound wave is travelling with a speed of 343 m/s, calculate its frequency if the wavelength of the wave is 500m. Solution:

We know that the speed of the wave is related to the frequency and wavelength as;

v = f f = v
So,

f = 343500 f = 0.686 per sec

So the frequency of the sound wave is 0.686 cycle per second which means that it is covering only 0.686 of its wavelength in one second.