Explaining The Speed Of Sound

[RainMan]

This is something I have never understood. Sounds travels faster through water than air. Water is denser than air. How does sound travel faster through a path of more resistance?

[Buffy]

It's not a matter of resistance, but more efficient propagation: each air molecule  has to travel farther to bump it's neighbor molecules to propagate the wave. More travel -> more time = slower....

 

 

Washington is the only place where sound travels faster than light, :phones:

Buffy

[CraigD]

…thus yielding this general pattern:

vsolids > vliquids > vgases

This is a good general rule – we can even apply rough numbers to it, like

v_solids =~ 4 v_liquids =~ 4 v_gases

 

It has some interesting exceptions, though...

 

The speed of sound in solids such as soft rubber is not about 16 times that of in air’s 343 m/s, but half it, about 150 m/s. In hard wood, it can be as high as 3960 m/s, but in a spongy wood like cork, it’s about 518 m/s, faster than in air, but slower than in water, 1433 m/s.

 

Another interesting feature of sound in solids is that it consists not just of the longitudinal wave we find in gasses and liquids, but of slower, fainter S (secondary, or “shear”) wave.

 

This EngineeringToolbox page has the speed of sound (longitudinal, and select shear) for some common solids. I got the above numbers from there.

[HydrogenBond]

Water is the most anomalous substance found in nature, with liquid water having a few speed of sound anomalies due to hydrogen bonding changing the inertial and elastic properties of the medium under various sets of conditions. 

 

 

The speed of sound in the oceans has a minimum at about 1000 m where the increase in speed due to increasing pressure balances the decreasing speed with drop in temperature. Sound waves are trapped and propagate horizontally in this SOFAR channel.

 

 

This SOFAR channel is good place to hide, under an invisible water ceiling. 

 

This anomaly has to due with hydrogen bonding in water, which defines its acoustic properties, being impacted in opposite ways by increasing pressure and decreasing temperature. 

[CraigD]

Water is the most anomalous substance found in nature, with liquid water having a few speed of sound anomalies due to hydrogen bonding changing the inertial and elastic properties of the medium under various sets of conditions.

 

This SOFAR channel is good place to hide, under an invisible water ceiling.

 

This anomaly has to due with hydrogen bonding in water, which defines its acoustic properties, being impacted in opposite ways by increasing pressure and decreasing temperature.

Do you have a souce for this claim, HydrogenBond :QuestionM :Exclamati

 

According to common sources such as its Wikipedia page, the SOFAR channel, a layer of ocean water where the speed of sound is at its minimum, is due to “the cumulative effect of temperature and water pressure (and, to a smaller extent, salinity)”.

[Coolio]

It's not a matter of resistance, but more efficient propagation: each air molecule  has to travel farther to bump it's neighbor molecules to propagate the wave. More travel -> more time = slower....

 

 

Washington is the only place where sound travels faster than light, :phones:

Buffy

We did this in physics gcse aha. If you don't know this, you probably shouldn't be here tbh... Which is directed at the OP, Not you :)

[tscience]

Sound travels in liquid faster because its molecules are less closely packed but between gas molecules are really far aside.

[Foghorn]

Regarding the speed of sound.

 

Facts I am sure of.

 

Sound travels faster as a whisper....(My girlfriend?)

 

If I put a taser to your skin, you  will feel it immediately

 

If I tase your boyfriend whose hand you are holding, the reaction can, in real time, be shown to be a bit slower.

 

This might not sound like proof to you but I have just shown that molecules in contact with molecules transmit anything.

 

Sorry man.

Edited October 30, 2014 by Foghorn