Temperature rule for the speed of sound in water: a chemical kinetics model

Water forms three-dimensional polymeric structures due to the influence of hydrogen bonds and is fundamentally different from other substances. One of the simplest ways to analyze the structure of water in any system, such as hydration, is to measure the degree of compressibility, which can be determined from the speed of sound, by making use of the physical laws established by Newton and later perfected by Laplace. Although the speed of sound is strongly dependent on the temperature of a liquid, Laplace's equation does not refer to temperature in any of its terms. It is necessary, therefore, to determine the degree of temperature dependency. However, only approximate expressions of a fifth-order polynomial have been reported so far in the literature. In this paper, a universal method for describing the speed of sound from the perspective of physicochemical reaction kinetics is presented. It is shown that the speed of sound U ms(-1)] changes with temperature T K] according to a thermodynamically-derived formula given as U= exp(-A/T-BlnT+C) and that the motion and propagation phenomena of sound energy can also be regarded as chemical reactions.