A ship sends a sound wave below it to the ocean floor to see how deep the ocean is at its location. If it takes 5 seconds for the sound wave to travel to a depth of 3625 meters and then reflect back to the ship, how fast is the sound wave traveling? Question 15 options: a) 9062.5 m/s b) 1450 m/s c) 725 m/s d) 18,125 m/s
Question
Answer: (b) 1450m/s
Explanation:The time it takes a sound wave to travel to a particular surface is equal to the time it takes to reflect back to its source.
As such, it would take twice as much time to get to the depth travelled for the sound wave to reflect back to the ship(source).
Therefore, since it takes 5seconds for the reflection to get back to the ship.
Then it takes {5/2}seconds …which is an equivalent of 2.5seconds for the sound to get to the 3625m depth.
Therefore, the speed(velocity) of the sound waves which is a measure of how fast the sound moves is;
Speed(v)= (3625m)/(2.5s)
The speed of the sound wave is therefore equal to 1450m/s.