Examples showing that the speed of sound in
steel is more than that in air
Answers
Answer:
Sound travels fastest in steel and slowest in air. Water is in between. This is because the particles in solids are closer together than the particles in liquids or gases, and the particles in liquids are closer together than the particles in gases. The tighter particles are packed in a space, they collide more frequently. This allows sound, which is simply the combined collisions of particles, to travel fastest in solids. So, to reiterate, sound travels fastest in steel, then water, and slowest in air.
Explanation:
Why does sound travel faster in a steel rod than in air?
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This is an interesting question which could be answered interms of the density of the material- sound travels faster in denser materials. I am not sure it answers the question ‘why’, although ‘why’ questions can be hard /impossible to answer fully.
Here is a model that might help explain. Imagine a row of iron atoms in a bar of iron/steel. The one on the left gets nudged to the right, it nudges the next iron atom which moves and nudges the third… .
You can think of this as being two processes - one the iron atom moving- this takes time. The other process is that the nudge gets passed on from the left side of an atom where it is nudged to the right side where it nudges the next atom. So the effect moves along the diameter of the atom, this is due to the displacement of the electrons - this will be quick- the electrons will get displaced, the effect will travel through the atom at close to the speed of light.
The total time to travel along the bar will consist of time takn by atoms to move to next atom plus time taken by electrons to displace/pass on effect. The time taken by the atoms to move is far and away the main factor. So materials with smaller gaps between the atoms require the atoms to move less and so this part takes less time. The time for the effect to travel via the electrons to the other side is not really affected.
Small gaps = shorter time/ faster speed of sound.
Small gaps = more atoms in same volume= denser
Steel is dense.