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Well I am doing some ACT prep work and this question is really getting to me. I don't understand...
traveling at approximately 34,300 centimeters per second, a sound wave would travel about how many centimeters in 4 hours?
a) 4.94 x 10^8
b) 4.94 x 10^7
c) 8.23 x 10^6
d) 8.23 x 10^5
e) 1.37x 10^5
Wouldn't the number of centimeters be 2.96352 x 10^10 cm?
I am probably wrong on that but I multiplied 34,300 cm by 60 3 times then multiplied that number by 4. I can't give you a direct answer(a, b, c, d, e) though as it just doesn't seem to match.....
Tell me if the number of centimeters helps though :)
Well, first you want to get everything in the same units. You know how many centimetres per second the wave travels so work out how many seconds it is travelling for.
There are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour so (60x60) seconds in an hour (i.e. 3600). Four hours is 14400 seconds. So the distance travelled is 34300x14400. Or 493920000. Which is 4.9392x10^8. It rounds off to 4.94x10^8 (answer A).
P.S. Whoever set the question did well with the wave speed. I know that the speed of sound at ground level at standard temperature and pressure is about 330m/s (so about 33,000 cm/s). Quite similar to the speed in your question.
