﻿THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



[FIFTH SERIES.] 



SEPTEMBER 1894. 



XXVIII. On the Velocity of Sound in Air, Gases, and Vapours 

 for Pure Notes of different Pitch. By J. Webster Low, 

 'Ph.D., B.A.* 



§ 1. Introduction. 



BY the publication of Regnault'sf great work and the 

 immediate corroboration of his results by Le KouxJ , the 

 general confidence in the previously accepted value of the 

 velocity of sound was severely shaken. Since then several 

 experimenters have sought, by measuring the wave-lengths of 

 notes of different pitch, to arrive indirectly at the velocity of 

 sound. With this object Kundt§ and Kayser|| have utilized the 

 former's dust-figures, SchneebeliU and Seebeck*"* Quincke's 

 interference-tubes ft; and all have agreed in finding a greater 

 velocity for the higher notes than for the lower ones, a result 

 the reverse of that found by Regnault and KonigJJ. 



From theoretical considerations, Helmholtz§§ and Kirch- 

 hoff || || have shown that friction and the conduction of heat 



* Communicated by the Author. 

 £■ t Compt. Rend. lxvi. pp. 209-220; Mem. de VInst. xxv. (18G7). 

 X Ann. de Chem. 4 s&ie, xii. pp. 345-418. 



§ Pogg. Ann. cxxvii. p. 497 (1866) ; and cxxxv. pp. 337-372 and 

 527-561 (1808). 



|| Wied. Ann. ii. pp. 218-241 (1877); and vi. p. 465 (1879). 

 H Vogg. Ann. cxxxvi. p. 296 (1869). 

 ** Vogg. Ann. cxxxix. p. 104 (1870). 

 tt Quincke, Pogg. Ann. cxxviii. p. 177 (1866). 

 t\ Konig, Mem. de TInst. xxxvii. p. 435. 



§§ Verhandlungen des natur.-histur. mediein. Vereins zu Heidelberg vom 

 Ja'hre 1863, iii. p. 16. 



|| || Pogg. Ann. cxxxiv. p. 177 (1868). 



Phil. Mag. S 5. Vol. 38. No. 232. Sept. 1894. S 



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