17.2 Speed of Sound, Frequency, and Wavelength

Sound, like all waves, travels at a certain speed and has the properties of frequency and wavelength. You can observe direct evidence of the speed of sound while watching a fireworks display. The flash of an explosion is seen well before its sound is heard, implying both that sound travels at a finite speed and that it is much slower than light. You can also directly sense the frequency of a sound. Perception of frequency is called pitch. The wavelength of sound is not directly sensed, but indirect evidence is found in the correlation of the size of musical instruments with their pitch. Small instruments, such as a piccolo, typically make high-pitch sounds, while large instruments, such as a tuba, typically make low-pitch sounds. High pitch means small wavelength, and the size of a musical instrument is directly related to the wavelengths of sound it produces. So a small instrument creates short-wavelength sounds. Similar arguments hold that a large instrument creates long-wavelength sounds.

The relationship of the speed of sound, its frequency, and wavelength is the same as for all waves:

$$v_{\text{w}}=\mathrm{f\lambda ,}$$

where $v_{\mathrm{w}}$ is the speed of sound, $f$ is its frequency, and $\lambda$ is its wavelength. The wavelength of a sound is the distance between adjacent identical parts of a wave—for example, between adjacent compressions as illustrated in Figure 17.8. The frequency is the same as that of the source and is the number of waves that pass a point per unit time.

Table 17.1 makes it apparent that the speed of sound varies greatly in different media. The speed of sound in a medium is determined by a combination of the medium’s rigidity (or compressibility in gases) and its density. The more rigid (or less compressible) the medium, the faster the speed of sound. For materials that have similar rigidities, sound will travel faster through the one with the lower density because the sound energy is more easily transferred from particle to particle. The speed of sound in air is low, because air is compressible. Because liquids and solids are relatively rigid and very difficult to compress, the speed of sound in such media is generally greater than in gases.

Earthquakes, essentially sound waves in Earth’s crust, are an interesting example of how the speed of sound depends on the rigidity of the medium. Earthquakes have both longitudinal and transverse components, and these travel at different speeds. The bulk modulus of granite is greater than its shear modulus. For that reason, the speed of longitudinal or pressure waves (P-waves) in earthquakes in granite is significantly higher than the speed of transverse or shear waves (S-waves). Both components of earthquakes travel slower in less rigid material, such as sediments. P-waves have speeds of 4 to 7 km/s, and S-waves correspondingly range in speed from 2 to 5 km/s, both being faster in more rigid material. The P-wave gets progressively farther ahead of the S-wave as they travel through Earth’s crust. The time between the P- and S-waves is routinely used to determine the distance to their source, the epicenter of the earthquake. The time and nature of these wave differences also provides the evidence for the nature of Earth's core. Through careful analysis of seismographic records of large earthquakes whose waves could be clearly detected around the world, Richard Dixon Oldham established that waves passing through the center of the Earth behaved as if they were moving through a different medium: a liquid. Later on, Inge Lehmann used more precise observations (partly based on a better coordinated network of seismographs she helped set up) to better define the nature of the core: that it was a solid inner core surrounded by a liquid outer core.

The speed of sound is affected by temperature in a given medium. For air at sea level, the speed of sound is given by

$$v_{\text{w}}=\left(\text{331}\text{m/s}\right)\sqrt{\frac{T}{\text{273}\text{K}}},$$

where the temperature (denoted as $T$) is in units of kelvin. The speed of sound in gases is related to the average speed of particles in the gas, $v_{\text{rms}}$, and that

$$v_{\text{rms}}=\sqrt{\frac{\text{3}\mathrm{kT}}{m}},$$

where $k$ is the Boltzmann constant ($1.38\times {\text{10}}^{\text{−23}}\text{J/K}$) and $m$ is the mass of each (identical) particle in the gas. So, it is reasonable that the speed of sound in air and other gases should depend on the square root of temperature. While not negligible, this is not a strong dependence. At $\text{0ºC}$, the speed of sound is 331 m/s, whereas at $\text{20.0ºC}$ it is 343 m/s, less than a 4% increase. Figure 17.9 shows a use of the speed of sound by a bat to sense distances. Echoes are also used in medical imaging.

One of the more important properties of sound is that its speed is nearly independent of frequency. This independence is certainly true in open air for sounds in the audible range of 20 to 20,000 Hz. If this independence were not true, you would certainly notice it for music played by a marching band in a football stadium, for example. Suppose that high-frequency sounds traveled faster—then the farther you were from the band, the more the sound from the low-pitch instruments would lag that from the high-pitch ones. But the music from all instruments arrives in cadence independent of distance, and so all frequencies must travel at nearly the same speed. Recall that

$$v_{\text{w}}=\mathrm{f\lambda .}$$

In a given medium under fixed conditions, $v_{\text{w}}$ is constant, so that there is a relationship between $f$ and $\lambda$; the higher the frequency, the smaller the wavelength. See Figure 17.10 and consider the following example.

The speed of sound can change when sound travels from one medium to another. However, the frequency usually remains the same because it is like a driven oscillation and has the frequency of the original source. If $v_{\text{w}}$ changes and $f$ remains the same, then the wavelength $\lambda$ must change. That is, because $v_{\text{w}}=\mathrm{f\lambda }$, the higher the speed of a sound, the greater its wavelength for a given frequency.

Adapted from College Physics 2e by OpenStax (openstax.org), licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Changes were made. License: CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.