Speed of Sound Test

Objective: Verify the speed of sound.

Equipment:

• Logger Pro with Microphone
• Computer
• Long Tube
• Meter Stick

Set Up: The tube was set standing up with the Logger Pro microphone at the top of the tube.

Procedure: The length of the tube was measured with the meter stick to be 0.9643 ± 0.0010 m. A quick sound ( a snap) was made at the top of the tube next to the microphone while data was being recorded. These were the results:
     This was the graph of sound (via pressure sensors) the two significant pieces of data shown are from the initial snap and the echo from the resonating tube. The time from the beginning of the first snap to the beginning of the echo was recorded by taking the difference in time from the first peak of the snap to the first peak of the echo. This was recorded to be 0.00580 ± 0.00005s.

     The speed of sound can be found by dividing the length traveled (two times the length of the tube) by the time it took to travel (found with the echo). 

The speed of sound was recorded to be 332 ± 3.6 m/s. It was important  to make the initial sound a quick as possible as to not interfere with the echo. This can be compared to the value of the speed of sound depending on temperature in the following way.

     This is a reasonable error which could have come from the time we used for the time traveled. The exact points were difficult to determine. This would have been the biggest source of error.