Sound waves speed and intensity on wood,metal and cement

[chenminmin]

Which one do you think does a sound wave travel faster ?How can I experiment on this? Thanks :)

 

[1MileCrash]

Which ever is the most rigid and dense, with closely packed molecules, essentially. "Metal" is very very non-specific...

I'd order it metal, cement, wood, assuming we're talking about a metal like lead.

 

[Dr Lots-o'watts]

It's actually not to hard to calculate if you can find the parameters for the solid you're interested in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound#Speed_of_sound_in_solids

 

[chenminmin]

I'm not sure what kind of metal it is but it is mostly used in constructions and the wood is the one used in making furnitures, for the cement ordinary cement only. How could i measure their speed? thanks :>

 

[nasu]

I'm not sure what kind of metal it is but it is mostly used in constructions and the wood is the one used in making furnitures, for the cement ordinary cement only. How could i measure their speed? thanks :>

You can measure it if you have a sound generator (or ultrasound transducer), a signal generator to produce the sound and an oscilloscope.
You simply measure the time of flight of the sound through a sample of the material.

However, if you just need estimates for the three materials, the highest speed is in the metal. It may be steel or aluminum (probably most used in construction) - between 5000 and 600 m/s.
Wood and concrete can be quite similar - around 3000 m/s. It depends on quality of wood and can vary quite a lot.

 

[chenminmin]

Thanks! could it be that sound wave is faster in cement than in wood?

how about their intensities?

 

[nasu]

Thanks! could it be that sound wave is faster in cement than in wood?

how about their intensities?

For first question, yes, I think so.

For the second, the intensity is not a property of the material.
If you mean the attenuation in the two materials, it's more complicated as they are both some sort of composite. The attenuation depends on the quality of the material, porosity, cracks, etc. I would expect wood to have a higher attenuation than concrete, though.