Why does the speed of sound get faster underwater, where as light speed slows?
Answers:
Light DOES travel slower in water than it does air! Otherwise, how would water bend light rays?
Sound DOES travel faster in water.
Both sound and light are wave phenomena.
Both sound and light must be regarded as Quanta under the right conditions.
Their respective "Wave Equations" incorporate the physical parameters of the media they're propagating through to determine the speed of wave propagation.
Sound Wave and Light Wave, "Wave Equations," are derived from totally different principals, hence their velocities are determined by entirely different material parameters.
It's a matter of observation that light travels fastest in a vacuum and slows down as it passes through various matter. The branch of Physics known as Quantum Electrodynamics provides a fundamental explanation for why this is so.
Same story with sound waves, except, the branch of Physics known as Hydrodynamics provides the fundamental explanation.
light speed does not slow.
sound and light have nothing to do with each other
sound is the vibration of the medium. when a medium is denser and more elastic, the sound tends to travel faster in it. sound travels faster in water than in air, and much faster in steel than in water.
i guess its because atoms in water are more dense, making sound waves travel faster while the water itself diffuses light or bends it so it takes more time for it to travel..
the speed of light doesn't slow, but its strength weakens, only because the water acts as a refractor. sound does speed up albeit slightly, but its strength increases, as water is a better conductor
because sound is affected by the thickness of the atmosphere around it, in this case water. its like laking through a two rooms, one is full of spagettie and one is eempty. as for light its goes so fast that its hard to percisley measure, but as far as i know its because light is a wave and energy for at the same time and is not affected by the spagetti in the room.
light does not need a medium to propagate through, whereas sound does. this is why light can travel in a vacuum but sound cannot. sound behaves as a wave and is caused by vibration and it travels better in an dense medium. light travels in waves also but it is composed of particles, which can be impeded.
Sound travels more quickly through denser materials. When a wave of motion transfers energy from one molecule to the next it goes faster if the molecules don't have to cross a larger void to transfer the energy to the next molecule.
Light refracts in water, it does not slow in any significant way.
Sound speeds up because the sound waves propagate much faster due to the compacted molecular structure of a liquids. In air, molecules are farther apart so the vibrations from sound waves are transferred from molecule to molecule slower than in water, where the molecules are much closer together.
Sound travels through water faster as there are more molecules to vibrate with each other. The light refracts more in water which might make it appear to go slower.
a lot of this has already been said so I'd just like to add
the whole point with the speed of light is its a constant thats at the very core of relativity and whilst sound is a wave that can only travel througha medium i.e. it does not travel through a vaccuum light has a wave particle duality so it does travel through vaccuums and does not slow down always going at 3x10 8ms
Sound is a mechanical wave. The movement is mechanically transferred from molecule of the medium to the other. Water molecules are closer to each other than in air - thus the transfer is quicker.
Light is different. The photons are not really moving through the water. They only "hop" from one molecule to the next. When a photon hits a molecule, it get absorbed, and then the moilecule emits another photon. This "absorb-emit" cycle takes time. That is why light is faster in vacuum than in any medium. And also that is why it is faster in air then in water - there are fewer molecules in air than in the equal volume of water - thus fewer obstacles for the photon = less time "wasted" on those abosrb-emit cycles.
water carries vibrating faster than light particals.it's the consistincy of the liquid..
Who told you the speed of light is lower under water?
Using the formula n=c/v
where n is refractive index, c is speed of light in a vacuum and and v is the speed of light in a medium.
We know that c is constant, but n and v can vary. Thus n is proportional to 1/v, basically if n increases v decreases and vice versa.
The refractive index of air is roughly 1.0, whereas the refractive index of water is roughly 1.3. Changing from air to water the refractive index increases thus the speed of light decreases.
As youve already had suitable answers for why the speed of sounds increases in water I shan't comment about that.
I would like to point out that anyone saying that the speed of light doesnt decrease in water should take a look at cerenkov radiation and why that would disagree with relativity if light didnt travel slower in water than in a vacuum.
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