Two students are provided with a starting pistol, a stopwatch and a long measuring tape. The starting pistol produces a loud sound and a puff of smoke. Describe how the students use the apparatus to calculate the speed of sound.
The students stand at a distance of 200 m from each other (measured with the measuring tape). Student 1 fires the pistol, Student 2 starts the stopwatch when they see smoke from the pistol and stop it when they hear the sound from the pistol.Using the equation Speed = Distance/Time and assuming that the time for the light to reach student two is negligible, they can then calculate the speed of sound.
JM
Related Physics GCSE answers
All answers ▸Calculate the momentum of a 5 tonne truck at 50km/h
Resistors of 5 ohms and 10 ohms are connected in series with a battery supplying 3 volts. What is the total resistance ? And calculate the current in the circuit.
A skydiver is at a height of 10,000 m. Assuming no air resistance, how fast is the skydiver travelling at 9,990 m above the ground?
pressure = 2.3 × 10^5 Pa temperature= 200K. At a constant volume, when the temperature increases to 300K what is the pressure in Pa?