Question

A girl stands 160 m away from a high wall and claps her hands at a steady rate so that each clap coincides with the echo of the one before. If her clapping rate is 60 per minute, what value does this give for the speed of sound?

Answer 1

Answer:

Speed of Sound = 320m/s

Step-by-step explanation:

As the girl is standing at a distance of 160m from the hill and the clap she does coincides with the sound of previous clap, then it is clear that;

Time taken by the sound to travel form the source(girl) and the hill(form where the sound strikes and echo is produced) = 1 second

Which is due to the fact that she makes exactly 60 claps, thus each clap made each second.

Now, as the speed can be calculated as:

s = vt

v = s/t --(i)

Now, the distance travelled by that sound wave(travelling from girl to the hill and striking back to the girl to produce echo) will be 2 times the distance between girl and hill which is '160m'.

Thus,

s = 2 × 160

s = 320m

Now, eq(i) =>

v = s/t

v = 320/1

v = 320 m/s.