fairfolio
Saved Projects

Measuring the Speed of Sound

CSEF · 2016 Physics & Astronomy

Ben R. Walker-Edwards · Pacific Collegiate School, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this study is to measure the speed of sound in air at different temperatures. Methods/Materials Microphones, computer software, cables, amplifier, mixer, 2 blocks of wood. Used wood blocks to generate sound. Used 2 separated microphones and computer program to record sound. Analyzed sound records to obtain time taken for sound to travel between microphones. Results Sound moves faster in higher temperatures. The experiment was able to measure the speed of sound to within about one percent of the accepted value. Conclusions/Discussion It is possible with quite available materials to obtain a highly accurate estimate of the speed of sound. The largest source of uncertainty was in the separation distance of the two microphones. Such uncertainty could be reduced through the use of longer cables connecting the microphones.

Summary statement

I measured the speed of sound in air using simple materials and found that it increases with higher temperatures.

Help received

I designed the experiment, carried out the measurements and analyzed the results.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2016 Physics & Astronomy · Entry J1728

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google