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.

Josh M. avatar
Answered by Josh M. Physics tutor

13517 Views

See similar Physics GCSE tutors
Cookie Preferences