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Shhh! Don't Make Waves

© Linda Bond

Here's the setup. You're at the ocean with some friends. You've been challenged to stand absolutely still for 5 minutes. If you can go that long without making a wave, you'll receive two tickets to the next Star Trek movie. You accept the challenge, wade a few feet into the surf, place yourself firmly on your two feet, and signal to begin the timing.

You challenger suddenly yells, "You lose!"

WHY?

Okay, so it's a pretty dumb opener. But I wanted to get your attention so I could point out a possibly disturbing fact:

Everywhere we go, at all hours of the day and night, in all situations, we are surrounded by hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of waves.

If you tend towards paranoia, I suggest you read no further, because just as we are all breathing air that has been breathed by someone else (YUCK!), we are constantly bombarded by waves created by our fellow beings. Of course, we are also creating waves ourselves, sending them off in all directions to harass those same beings. In short, it's really quite crowded here!

Let's just look at sound waves, for example. There's...

• the dripping faucet in the kitchen
• the refrigerator motor
• that "other person's" breathing
• the snoring dog
• the VCR motor which came on 10 minutes ago to tape the special program running at 3:00 a.m.
• the car slowly rolling out of the driveway as your teenager (or someone else?) sneaks away for a tryst
• and your own heartbeat thumping (hopefully) away in your chest.

But that's not all. There are also electromagnetic waves at work around us, too. (More on that at a later date.) So don't you think it's a good idea to get to know a little bit about all this stuff that's slamming into you and may be responsible for making you just a tad bit stressed out?

I do. So let's look at sound a little closer.

The Speed of Sound

Just how fast does sound travel, anyway? Well, it depends on the "medium" it is passing through. In "normal" air (whatever that is), it is about 1100 feet per second, or 750 miles per hour (340 meters per second). Here are some other examples:

• Through dry air, with a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), it is slightly slower: 330 meters per second (300 m/s) or 1083 feet per second (1083 ft/s).

• In water, the speed of sound is more than 4 times greater than in air, at about 1490 m/s or 4,888 feet per second.

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