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Name: Leon B.
Status: educator
Age: 50s
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 4/23/2004
Question:
What is average speed of sound at 41000 feet altitude?

Replies:
The speed of sound at 41,000 feet altitude is about 660 mph.

Go to web site at

http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/sound.html

and you can quickly calculate the speed of sound at various altitudes. It also has a good discussion of the physics of sound.

Best, Dick Plano, Professor of Physics emeritus, Rutgers Universiey

The best way to obtain this average is to use the 1976 standard atmosphere model calculator. This is a reference model used by scientists and engineers to input average data into computations so that "everyone" is using the same reference. You can find the calculator on a number of web sites if you search the term "standard atmosphere". One calculator is located on the URL: http://www.digitaldutch.com/atmoscalc/ Puting in 41000 ft gives 968 ft/sec

Vince Calder


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