What Is The Speed Of Sound?

We make a sound every day, and with every sound, there is something that vibrated somewhere. Something moves back and forth rapidly. The sound starts with the vibration of an object.

Sound has to travel in something which has to serve as a carrier of sound. The carrier is called “a medium”. A medium may be anything, say – water, air, objects, or even the earth. The Indians used to put their ears close to the ground to hear a distant noise.

In absence of a medium, there can not be the travel of sound. No medium no sound is in actual practice. In a vacuum, the space containing no air or any substance, the sound would not travel through it. The reason is that sound travels in waves. The vibration of objects causes the molecul8 or particles in the substance next to them to vibrate. Each individual particle continues to pass the motion on to the next to it and this results in sound waves.

The medium may be air to wood to water for the sound to travel and hence the difference in the speed of sound waves. There is a counter-question when we ask how fast does sound travel, we have to know the medium.

The speed of sound in the air is about 335 meters per second or 1208 kilometers per hour. These figures are relevant only with a temperature of zero degrees centigrade. With the increase in temperature, the speed of sound also rises. Sound travels faster in water than in air. At 8 degrees centigrade sound travels through water at 1436 meters per second or 5164 kilometers per hour. And in steel, the sound travels 17856 kilometers per hour.

One may think that a louder sound would travel faster than a weak one. This is not so. The speed of sound is not affected by its pitch. The speed is very much dependent on the medium through which it travels. Strike two stones when standing in water and then under the water. The difference in the speed of sound when traveling through water is very amazing.