Does Sound Travel Faster Through Air Or Water?
The speed of sound varies with the density of the medium. As water is denser than air, sound travels faster in water than in air, all other things equal. The reason sound travels faster in denser media is because the molecules of denser media are packed tighter than those of sparser media. And a sound wave is simply the transfer of kinetic energy (the wave front) from one group of molecules to the next adjoining group. When the next group of molecules is closer, the transfer of the energy takes place faster simply because the energy has less distance to travel per transfer. So when the next group of molecule is way off, as they are in gases like air, it takes more time to get all that energy transfered than, say, in a solid where the next group over is right there in the immediate neighborhood. Keep in mind energy transfer rates are not instantaneous. They are both time and distance dependent. Sound travels way farther under water than in the air. But this is not so much because of the
