Non-stiff materials such as air and water have relatively slow speeds of sound, while stiff materials such as diamond and iron have high speeds of sound. Similarly, in real materials, stiffer chemical bonds between atoms leads to a faster speed of sound. In the metaphorical grid of balls and springs, stiffer springs will snap back faster, leading to faster wave propagation. With the compression-wave nature of sound in mind, it should make sense that stiffer materials propagate sound at higher speeds. In a similar way, standard sound is just a compression wave traveling through the atoms and bonds in a material. This process repeats in domino fashion and you get a compression wave traveling though the grid of balls. In the process, however, the neighboring balls get pushed, causing the springs connecting them and their neighbors to compress. But the compressed springs bounce back, replacing the balls to their original position. When you push on a few balls in the grid, they move closer to their neighbors on one side and the springs connecting the balls and their neighbors compress. You can think of a material as a grid of heavy balls (representing the atoms) connected by springs (representing the bonds between the atoms). Fundamentally, standard sound is a compression wave traveling though a material. The speed of sound in air under typical conditions is about 343 meters per second, while the speed of sound in water is about 1,480 meters per second. Sound travels faster in water than in air. Sound travels so well underwater that submarines use sound-based sonar to image their environment.
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