This fighter jet pictured below has surpassed the speed of sound. When an object does this, it creates a sonic boom. A crack of a whip is an example of a small sonic boom caused by the end of the whip breaking the sound barrier. Sonic booms are the sound heard from the shock waves caused by the object moving faster than sound. The lowering of pressure made by the aircraft when approaching Mach one, or the speed of sound, creates the water vapor in this image.
Travis K. Mendoza, US Navy
these allow sea creatures to communicate farther. Whales are by far the loudest animals on earth. They also communicate in extremely low frequencies, or slower, larger vibrations. While both of these help the massive mammals communicate effectively across oceans, their medium of water adds to the list of benefits.
Water is a much better sound carrier than air simply because of its density. As waves travel through liquids, they can easily bump close particles. As sound moves to the solid state it travels about twenty times faster than in air. Solids have almost no interference, or movement, and are very dense. These two qualities make them ideal for sound. The true mathematical equation for calculating the speed of sound in any material is the square root of the substance’s elasticity over its density. (V=√{E/D})
Hearing Sound
Humans only hear a small portion of sounds just as we only see a small fraction of the electromagnetic