Re: Why doesn't sound travel at the speed of light in solids?

[Uncle Al <UncleAl0@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Seven Seas Oscirius wrote:
> 
> The atoms in solids are bonded rigidly en masse with electronic bonds.
> And the propagation speed of distubances in electromagnetic fields is c.

Mass.  Sound is not electromagnetic, it is mass displacive (either
oscillatory at soundspeed or net with a shock, re Cerenkov radiation
in a medium).  Look up the modeled speed of sound in a medium and
compare it to, oh, the pendulum equation.

An electric signal "in" a round wire travels at lightspeed divided by
the square root of the surrounding medium's refractive index.  You go
look up the magnetic retardation.  The exterior matters because most
of the fun is in the surrounding fields not in the wire.  What happens
in the case of a superconducting wire?

-- 
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
 (Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
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