Question

What type of wave travels the fastest?
A) Sound
B) Earthquake
C) Ocean
D) Light

Answer 1

Hint:A wave is the disturbance that transfers energy through matter or space there are two types of wave i.e. mechanical and electromagnetic.

Mechanical are those which propagate through a physical matter such as sound waves, ocean waves or earthquake waves while electromagnetic waves do not require a medium and they can travel through vacuum such as light waves . Electromagnetic waves do not need a medium; they can travel faster than mechanical waves.

Step by step solution:
In our question there are four options we will discuss; we will discuss all of them in this part.

Sound wave - Sound wave is mechanical waves which can not travel in vacuum it requires a medium to travel.

The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. The speed of sound in air is about 343 metres per second. It depends strongly on temperature as well as the medium through which a sound wave is propagating.

Earthquake wave - Earthquake wave or Seismic waves are waves of energy that travel through the Earth's layers, and are a result of an earthquake, explosion, or a volcano that gives out low-frequency acoustic energy.

The propagation velocity of the waves depends on density and elasticity of the medium. Velocity tends to increase with depth and ranges from approximately 2 to 8 km/s in the Earth's crust up to 13 km/s in the deep mantle.

Ocean wave - the speed of ocean waves depends on many factors like depth of ocean, wind speed and the wavelength of waves. The speed of tsunamis waves in the ocean is about 30 to 50 km/h.

Light wave – light wave is an electromagnetic wave which can travel in vacuum and all electromagnetic radiation travels at the same speed which is about $3 \times {10^8}m/\sec $ through a vacuum. We call this the "speed of light";
Nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

So in this question option D is correct.

Note:As we know electromagnetic wave do not need any medium to travel it can travel in medium or without any medium but mechanical wave always required a medium to travel and the velocity of wave depends on many factors of medium as pressure density and temperature so these wave can not gain speed more than speed of electromagnetic wave.