For my 8th grade science project, I have
decided to conduct an experiment to see how the
temperature of air affects the speed of sound in
that medium. I have made some research on the
subject, and I have found a design for an
experiment to do this test:
I have to insert on one side of a plastic
cylinder a speaker, delivering a pulse at a
regular rhythm. On the other end will be a
microphone connected to an oscilloscope, which
will be mounted so that I can adjust its
position from the pulse. By moving the
microphone enough to change the position of the
graph on the oscilloscope, I can find the
relationship between the distance of the pulse
and the microphone in relation to the increased
time. By doing this several times with various
distances I can estimate the speed of sound, and
by heating or cooling the air in the tube (using
applying ice packs on the sides, or heating it
with a blow dryer) and measuring the speed of
sound at those temperatures, I will be able to
see the relationship between the speed of sound
in air and the temperature.
Could any of you help me to do this
experiment at your lab, where we will need a
pulse generator and an oscilloscope? I will
take care of the rest of the equipment that I
need. I think that this experiment will take a
couple of hours and I will do my best while
working there.
Sincerely,
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Answer 1:
I can’t help you with the lab equipment, but
I can say that you should expect that c
is proportional to sqr(T0), hence you
might at the get-go see if given the range of Ts
you will be able to set up, AND the
uncertainties of c (sound speed) if you will be
able to actually see the correlation expected,
or if it will be buried in the noise... that
exercise would teach you a lot.
c=sqr( gamma * R' *T)
where gamma is heat capacity ratio,
R' is universal R/molar mass of air
and T is temperature in kelvins ( * means
multiply by)
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