Question
(a) What is the speed of sound in a medium where a 100-kHz frequency produces a 5.96-cm wavelength? (b) Which substance in Table 17.1 is this likely to be?
Final Answer
- steel
Solution video
OpenStax College Physics, Chapter 17, Problem 4 (Problems & Exercises)
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Video Transcript
This is College Physics Answers with Shaun Dychko. We want to know the speed of sound in some medium where the frequency is known to be 100 kilohertz which is 100 times 10 to the 3 hertz and its wavelength is 5.96 centimeters and when writing down the information that we are given, we always use this as the time to convert units so we don't have to think about it later. So 5.96 centimeters is 5.96 times 10 to the minus 2 meters and we are converting into mks units— meters, kilograms and seconds. So the wave speed then is the frequency multiplied by the wavelength and that works out to 5.96 times 10 to the 3 meters per second and part (b) asks us what substance is this? And if we look in table [17.1], we can see that steel has a speed of sound of 5960 meters per second.