MEASURING

THE SPEED
OF SOUND
IN
AIR WITH A
HELMHOLTZ
RESONATOR

Sofía Sánchez Ferrández

 INDEX

1 Objective

Material and experimental

2 setup

Results and discussion

3

Conclusion
4
 OBJECTIVES

Study how a Helmholtz resonator works.

Obtain the speed of sound in air from the resonance
frequency of a Helmholtz resonator.
Determine the air density from the value of the speed
of sound in air obtained.

MATERIAL AND EXPERIMENTAL

SETUP

A glass bottle (Helmholtz resonator), a microphone, a

preamplifier, a holder with clip, an oscilloscope, a scale and
water.

Figure 1: Collage with the material used.

 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
EXERCISE 1
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
EXERCISE 1

Now, here’s the table with the data taken in the laboratory and Vo, values we’re going
to need to calculate the rest.

Table 1: Table with the data taken at the lab as well as the value of Vo .

Finally, this is the table with all the data asked for in the statement:

Table 2: In this table we have all the average values asked for as well as the errors associated.
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
EXERCISE 1

Another values we’ve used for the calculus are:

Table 3: Table with the data of the bottle used in the laboratory.

Table 4: Value of water density and its error.

EXERCISE 2

The error representation is in the following page

 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
EXERCISE 2

EXERCISE 3

Table 5: Table with the important data as a result of the least squares.

As we can see, r is really close to 1, so it’s a great fit. We can see as well that N is smaller than
its error, that means that our value N is equal to 0.
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
EXERCISE 4

To calculate the speed of sound in air and it’s error with the use of the result of the previous
least squares in table 3, we’ve used these equations.

The results are in the following table:

Table 6: Table with the values needed for the calculation of c and its errors.

Table 7: Table with the speed of sound in air and its error.
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

EXERCISE 5

The equation 4 in the lab report coincides with Eq. 12 in our document.

Next, this is the formula used to calculate the error:

Table 8: Table with the other values used to calculate the air density: adiabatic air constant,
atmospheric pressure and its errors associated .

Table 9: Table with the air density and its error.

 QUESTION
EXERCISE 6

To calculate the relative error we’ve used the following formula:

With these two formulas and the c calculated previously we can solve the exercise, the
results are in this table:

Table 10: Table with both speed of sound calculated and the relative error.

Both values are pretty close and the relative error it’s pretty small, that means our
experiment was really accurate.
 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
CONCLUSIONS

As we’ve seen throughout the practice, we’ve been able to study how
the Helmholtz resonator works, as well as obtaining the speed of sound
in air from the resonance frequency thanks to the least squares method
and represent it. Finally, we’ve also obtained the air density with the
speed of sound calculated previously, with all of that we’ve been able to
prove the theory studied before.
Obviously, they’re variations because of the errors, but all it’s taken into
account and mentioned.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Practice guide.
THE END