In a compressible sound transmission medium - mainly air - air particles get an accelerated motion: the particle acceleration or sound acceleration with the symbol a in metre/second2. In acoustics or physics, acceleration (symbol: a) is defined as the rate of change (or time derivative) of velocity. It is thus a vector quantity with dimension length/time2. In SI units, this is m/s2.
To accelerate an object (air particle) is to change its velocity over a period. Acceleration is defined technically as "the rate of change of velocity of an object with respect to time" and is given by the equation
where
- a is the acceleration vector
- v is the velocity vector expressed in m/s
- t is time expressed in seconds.
This equation gives a the units of m/(s·s), or m/s2 (read as "metres per second per second", or "metres per second squared").
An alternative equation is:
where
- is the average acceleration (m/s2)
is the initial velocity (m/s)
is the final velocity (m/s)
is the time interval (s)
Transverse acceleration (perpendicular to velocity) causes change in direction. If it is constant in magnitude and changing in direction with the velocity, we get a circular motion. For this centripetal acceleration we have
One common unit of acceleration is g-force, one g being the acceleration caused by the gravity of Earth.
In classical mechanics, acceleration is related to force and mass (assumed to be constant) by way of Newton's second law:
Equations in terms of other measurements
The Particle acceleration of the air particles a in m/s2 of a plain sound wave is:
| Symbol | Units | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| a | m/s2 | particle acceleration |
| v | m/s | particle velocity |
| δ | m, meters | particle displacement |
| = 2 · · f | radians/s | angular frequency |
| f | Hz, hertz | frequency |
| p | Pa, pascals | sound pressure |
| Z | N·s/m3 | acoustic impedance |
| J | W/m2 | sound intensity |
| E | W·s/m3 | sound energy density |
| Pac | W, watts | sound power or acoustic power |
| A | m2 | area |
