Speed of Sound With Moving Mobile Phone

Live Script illustrating measurement of the speed of sound using a moving mobile phone.

This educational Live Script shows how to measure the speed of sound using a train of structured acoustic pulses broadcast from a laptop and detected at various distances with a mobile phone. It is a companion to Speed of Sound with Multiple Mobile-Phone Microphones [1] which used sound of a mobile instrument. The supplied data suggests this technique can achieve percent level accuracy in determining the speed of sound over distances up to 30'.

This script may interest instructors and students of physics and related fields. It illustrates a number of data cleaning and analysis techniques. Some "Try this" suggestions are included for further exploration.