Determine the width of the canyon.

Question

A broken hearted man standing somewhere between two walls of wide canyon shouts "Walang Forever" If the fitourst echo arrived after an interval of 1.4 weconds while the second arrived 0.8 seconds later, determine the width of the canyon. The speed of thhe sound can be approximated 340 m/s

Answer 1

Represent the walls of the canyon as A and B and the man by M between A and B, then AB=AM+MB.

The echoes are caused by reflection, and the sound has to travel from M to A and back again, so the distance is 2AM. Similarly, between M and B the distance is 2MB.

So 2AM=340×1.4 and 2MB=340×2.2, therefore AB=340×1.4/2+340×2.2/2=340(0.7+1.1)=340×1.8=612m.