Posted by Steve Simon on January 14, 2013, 4:19 pm, in reply to "Re: Sound Polarisation"
Think about waves on a slinky or spring. You can either make a wave by compressing the slinky (moving it in the length of the slinky itself) or by shaking the slinky perpendicular to its length. See the video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp77vVRfgmY
Your intuition is correct though. The longitudinal restoring force is stronger than the transverse restoring force --- which results in faster longitudinal waves than transverse waves.
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