Phenomenon
Off in the distance you see lightning. About 3 seconds later, you hear the thunder.
Most people make the claim that the storm is about 1 mile for every second that passes. We're going to investigate just how far the storm is for every second that passes, and see if the claim is true.
Question
How fast is the speed of sound?
Experimental Design
Because sound is a wave (compressional) it also has the same property of any wave - and that is it reflects! What this means is that sound makes an echo when it reflects.
So to test the speed of sound, what we're going to do is walk 100 steps away from the school and take a set of blocks and smack them together and make a sound.
Next, we'll measure the time it takes for the echo to return from the sound of the smack.
Then we'll measure how far each step is and calculate how many feet each step is, and calculate the distance the smack was from the school.
Since it is an echo, we'll double the distance the sound took to echo back from the school and use the following formula:
Speed of Sound = 2*Distance / Time
Off in the distance you see lightning. About 3 seconds later, you hear the thunder.
Most people make the claim that the storm is about 1 mile for every second that passes. We're going to investigate just how far the storm is for every second that passes, and see if the claim is true.
Question
How fast is the speed of sound?
Experimental Design
Because sound is a wave (compressional) it also has the same property of any wave - and that is it reflects! What this means is that sound makes an echo when it reflects.
So to test the speed of sound, what we're going to do is walk 100 steps away from the school and take a set of blocks and smack them together and make a sound.
Next, we'll measure the time it takes for the echo to return from the sound of the smack.
Then we'll measure how far each step is and calculate how many feet each step is, and calculate the distance the smack was from the school.
Since it is an echo, we'll double the distance the sound took to echo back from the school and use the following formula:
Speed of Sound = 2*Distance / Time