Everyone knows the old trick of putting your

ear to a train track to get early warning of an

approaching train or remember the during your
childhood days where you use tin cans with
attached strings to talk with your friends. Sound can
travel great distances in many solid materials, and
moreover, it travels quickly. The speed of sound in
an iron rail is roughly ten times that in air!
Sound is a disturbance of mechanical
energy that propagates through matter as a
longitudinal wave. Sound is characterized by the
properties of sound waves, which are frequency,
wavelength, period, amplitude, and speed. The
latter is sometimes referred to as 'sound velocity'
but this is incorrect as it is not a vector quantity.
Humans perceive sound by the sense of
hearing. By sound, we commonly mean the
vibrations that travel through air and can be heard
by humans. However, scientists and engineers use
a wider definition of sound that includes low and
high frequency vibrations in air that cannot be
heard by humans, and vibrations that travel through
all forms of matter, gases, liquids and solids. Sound
can also be perceived by many other animals and
is also used for echolocation.
The matter that supports the sound is called
the medium. Sound propagates as waves of
alternating pressure, causing local regions of
compression and rarefaction. Particles in the
medium are displaced by the wave and oscillate.
The scientific study of sound is called acoustics
while that underwater is called hydro acoustics.
Noise is often used to refer to an unwanted
sound. In science and engineering, noise is an
undesirable component that obscures a wanted
signal. Sound is the movement of energy through a
substance in longitudinal waves. Sound is
produced when a force causes an object to vibrate.
Sound is perceived through the sense of
hearing. Humans and many animals use their ears
to hear sound, but loud sounds and low-frequency
sounds can be perceived by other parts of the body
through the sense of touch as vibrations. Sounds
are used in several ways, notably for
communication through speech and music. They
can also be used to acquire information about
properties of the surrounding environment such as
spatial characteristics and presence of other
animals or objects. For example, bats use

echolocation, ships and submarines use sonar and

humans can determine spatial information by the
way in which they perceive sounds.
Humans can generally hear sounds with
frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz (the audio
range) although this range varies significantly with
age, occupational hearing damage, and gender; the
majority of people can no longer hear 20,000 Hz by
the time they are teenagers, and progressively lose
the ability to hear higher frequencies as they get
older. Most human speech communication takes
place between 200 and 8,000 Hz and the human
ear is most sensitive to frequencies around 10003,500 Hz. Sound above the hearing range is known
as ultrasound, and that below the hearing range as
infrasound.
The speed at which sound travels depends
on the medium through which the waves are
passing, and is often quoted as a fundamental
property of the material. In general, the speed of
sound is proportional to the square root of the ratio
of the stiffness of the medium and its density.
Those physical properties and the speed of sound
change with ambient conditions. For example, the
speed of sound in air and other gases depends on
temperature. In air, the speed of sound is
approximately 344 m/s, in water 1500 m/s and in a
bar of steel 5000 m/s. The speed of sound is also
slightly sensitive (to second order) to the sound
amplitude, resulting in nonlinear propagation
effects, such as the weak production of harmonics
and the mixing of tones.
The behaviour of sounds can be observed,
like the Doppler Effect and shockwaves. The
Doppler Effect is a phenomenon observed
whenever the source of waves is moving with
respect to an observer. The Doppler effect can be
described as the effect produced by a moving
source of waves in which there is an apparent
upward shift in frequency for the observer and the
source are approaching and an apparent downward
shift in frequency when the observer and the
source is receding. The Doppler Effect can be
observed to occur with all types of waves - most
notably water waves, sound waves, and light
waves.
There are several applications to sound
namely, Ultrasonic Waves: Humans can normally
hear sound frequencies between 20 and 20,000 Hz

(20kHz). When a sound wave's frequency lies

above 20 kHz, it is called an ultrasonic wave. While
we cannot hear ultrasonic waves, we apply them in
various technologies such as sonar systems,
sonograms, surgical tools, and cleaning systems.

Some animals also use ultrasonic waves in a

specialized technique called echolocation that
allows them to pinpoint objects and other animals,
even in the dark.

Theory
Sound waves are longitudinal waves traveling through an elastic medium. The source of sound
waves is a vibrating object such as loud speaker, a tuning fork, or a metal rod. The elastic medium
in the path of the sound waves becomes alternately denser and rarer. When the molecules are forced
closer together than normal, the region of higher density and pressure is called a compression or
condensation. When the molecules are spread farther apart than normal, the region of lower density
is called a rarefaction.
Sound waves also obey the fundamental equation of wave propagation. Thus the speed v of a sound
wave is given by

where f is the frequency and is the wavelength of the wave. The frequency of a longitudinal
wave is the number of compressions or rarefactions that pass any point in the elastic medium in one
second. The wavelength of a longitudinal wave is the distance between any two consecutive
compressions or rarefactions.
Sound waves travel through solids, liquids, and gases at different speeds. The speed of sound in a
material depends on the compressibility (elasticity) and density of the material through which it is
passing. In general, the stiffer a material is, the faster sound travels through it. This seems
reasonable because the molecules in an elastic material are tightly coupled. Therefore, they respond
to each other's motions and are able to transmit a wave disturbance through the materials.
Theoretical Speed of Sound in a Metal.
The speed of sound v through a metal rod is given by

where Y is the Young's modulus for the substance through which the sound is passing and
density of the substance.

is the

Experimental Determination of the Speed of Sound in a Metal.

Sound waves may be sent through a metal rod by stroking one end of the rod with a rosined piece
of cloth or leather. Standing waves are set up in the rod and if the rod is clamped at its center, the
midpoint of the rod is a node of the standing wave and each end of the rod is an antinode of the
standing wave. Thus, the wavelength
of the rod, that is

of the sound waves in the metal rod is twice the length

where L is the length of the metal rod.

The sound waves passing through the metal rod can be transmitted to a gas such as air by means of
an apparatus that is known as Kundt's tube.

Part of the metal rod is inside a glass tube filled with air, forming an air column. The far end of the
air column is either closed (with a rubber stopper, or a cork), or left open, and the other end of the
air column is a disk, which is attached to one end of the vibrating metal rod. The rod's vibrations
are transmitted to the disk so that the disk moves back and forth with the end of the rod. The
vibrating disk, in turn, causes the air inside the glass tube to vibrate with the same frequency as the
rod. When the sound waves enter the air column from the disk, they travel along the length of the
glass column, strike the end of the tube, and are reflected back up the tube. The air in the glass tube
is simultaneously acted upon by two sets of waves traveling in opposite directions. If the length of
the air column is correct, then a standing wave pattern is set up inside the air column. The antinodes
of the standing wave pattern are the points in which the air molecules have a maximum
displacement, whereas the nodes are the points in which the air molecules are not displaced. These
standing waves can be observed by lightly coating the inside of the glass tube with a very dry
powder (cork dust). The nodes are labeled N in the above figure and the antinodes are labeled
A. The Antinode is located at the center of each striation (grooves) formed by the maximum
displacement of the powder. The wavelength
of the sound waves in the air can be obtained by
measuring the distance between consecutive Antinodes (the distance is equal to 1/2 of wavelength).
The frequency of the sound in the air fair is the same as that in the metal rod fmetal, that is fair = fmetal.
Thus, this frequency can be used to calculate the speed of wave in metal: v metal = fmetal

The speed of sound in air can be determined by measuring the air temperature T C in Celsius
degree:
v = (331.45 + 0.61 TC) m/s.