Question

You and a friend are swimming at your grandparent's house one toasty

summer afternoon. You have music playing through the Bluetooth speaker

on the pool deck, but every time you go underwater, you can hear the

noise, but you cannot understand the words of the song. What would

explain this phenomenon? *

Sound waves travel faster in a gas than they do in a liquid, which is why you cannot

understand the words,

Sound waves travel faster in a liquid than a gas, our ears are just not designed to

translate the faster moving waves,

Sound waves cannot travel at all in a liquid, which is why you cannot understand the

words and it's a miracle you can even hear the music at all,

Sound waves travel at the same speed regardless of the medium; your grandfather is

turning the music on and off when you go underwater and the noise you hear is the

song stuck in your head,

Answer 1

Sound waves travel faster in a liquid than a gas, our ears are just not designed to translate the faster moving waves.

Step-by-step explanation:

Sound waves are mechanical waves which travel through vibrating the medium (the "stuff") they're traveling through. This means they actually move faster through materials that are more dense, and will move more quickly through liquid than gas, and a solid than a liquid. However, our ears are adapted to "translating" sound waves in air rather than water, so we don't understand the music well when the waves move through the water.

A similar idea explains why our vision is blurry underwater; light waves travel at a different speed (slower, not faster!) in water and our eyes perceive this change in speed as blurriness.