How fast does sound travel?
The speed at which sound propagates (or travels from its source) is directly influenced by both the medium through which it travels and the factors affecting the medium, such as altitude, humidity and temperature for gases like air. Bad news for Star Wars fans there is no sound in the vacuum of space because there are too few molecules to propagate a wave.
The answer to this depends on the material it is traveling through. In air, sound waves travel at around 330 metres/second (when the air temperature is 0 degrees centigrade). At 40 degrees centigrade (a very very hot day) the velocity increases to 354 metres/second in air. Sound in water goes much faster, around 1500 metres/second. So if 2 whales were singing to each other and they were 90 km apart, the sound would take 90000/1500 = 60 seconds to travel from one to another. Sound in steel travels even faster, at 6000 metres/second. Engineers building the channel tunnel used to communicate with other engineers many miles away by tapping messages onto the steel casing of the tunnel.
is a vibration that travels through an elastic medium as a wave. The speed of sound describes how much distance such a wave travels in a certain amount of time. In dry air at 20 °C (68 °F), the speed of sound is 343 m/s. This also equates to 1235 km/h, 767 mph, 1125 ft/s, or about one mile in five seconds. Although it is commonly used to refer specifically to air, the speed of sound can be measured in virtually any substance. Sound travels faster in liquids and non-porous solids than it does in air.
