Direct measurement of the speed of sound using a microphone and a speaker

Abstract

We present a simple and accurate experiment to obtain the speed of sound in air using a conventional speaker and a microphone connected to a computer. Afree open source digital audio editor and recording computer software application allows determination of the time-of-flight of the wave for different distances, from which the speed of sound is calculated. The result is in very good agreement with the reported value in the literature. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.