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Asked by A'Mari to Greg, Jen, Laura, Mobeen, Paul on 9 Mar 2016.
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Paul O'Mahoney answered on 9 Mar 2016:
Sounds in air travel at around 340 meters per second, so already that is quite fast! Interestingly, sound travels much faster in solid materials as there are more molecules in a smaller space to bounce the sound around, and going the other way, that’s why you wouldn’t hear anything in space – because there is nothing to bounce the sound around!
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Jen Lowe answered on 9 Mar 2016:
Mostly the sounds you are hearing only travel a short distance from the source to your ear so you don’t notice the time it takes.
The speed of sound in air is fast ~343 m/s (metres travelled every second) and varies depending what it travels through.
You can notice the effect of the speed of sound when you watch a thunderstorm – you will see the flash before you hear the rumble of thunder. The time gap between the flash and the sound can be used to estimate how far away the storm is (and/or if it’s getting closer or more distant). Also if a really fast military plane goes by, you look at where you can hear the loud noise coming from, but then realise that the sight of the plane is ahead of where you are looking. -
Greg Melia answered on 9 Mar 2016:
Sound is created and travels by the particles in the air vibrating and knocking into each other. Have you seen a Newton’s cradle, like in the video? You can think of sound travelling a bit like that.
The speed of sound in air is relatively quite slow. Like Paul says, when sound travels in solid materials that have lots more other particles for each vibrating particle to knock into, it travels much faster. It’s still not nearly as fast as light though: in free space, light travels 186,000 miles every second.
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