Homework Help: physics

Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 11:00am.

You decide to experiment to measure the speed of sound. You have a friend drop a softball at the same time he hits an air horn. If you are 150 m away from your friend and you measure 0.45 seconds between the time you see the ball drop and you hear the sound of the horn, what is your experimental value of the speed of sound?

physics - drwls, Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 11:22am
Light travels about one million times faster than sound (in air), so you may consider the sight of the dropping of the ball to be the same instant that it really happens.

Divide the separation distance (150 m) by the time delay of the sound (0.45 s) to get the speed of sound.

You should get 333 m/s, which is about right

Answer this Question

Related Questions

Physics - I have to design an experiment to measure the speed of sound. We'...
Physics Correction - You drop a ball from a window on an upper floor of a ...
Physics - While warming up in her tryout as a pitcher for the Montwood softball ...
physics - A softball (350g) is thrown with an initial speed of 23 m/s straight ...
Physics - I have an experiment in which I drop a tennis ball ,, and measure its ...
physics - A softball (350g) is thrown with an initial speed of 27m/s. The moment...
Physics(Please respond) - 1) A cave explorer drops a stone from rest into a hole...
physics - You throw a softball (of mass 300 g) straight up into the air. It ...
physics - At the Indianapolis 500, you can measure the speed of cars just by ...
Physics HELP - An ultrasound transducer used to measure the speed of blood cells...

For Further Reading

First Name:
School Subject:
Answer: