One way to find the speed of a wave is to determine both its frequency and its wavelength independently. This may work well for finding the speed of sound in a solid. Suppose we excite a metal bar at 4800 Hz and measure the nodes in a standing wave in the bar to determine that the wavelength is 1.25 meters. The speed of sound in the metal is 960 m/s 6000 m/s 1.04x10-3 m/s 331 m/s