Why do some metals ring when struck while others don’t?
In: Physics
Sound is a mechanical wave, so it needs a medium (the air, water, a drum, etc.) to travel through, it does so by agitating the molecules of its medium along the way, which expands in the direction of the wave, by second hand agitation and so on.
Different materials have different characteristics on how well it transfer the sound across it depending on composition, shape, etc., some grant less “room for movement” between its molecules (think of how well sounds navigates in a room full of water vapor compared to screaming to the same amount but in the shape of a block of ice). Even wood has different propagation properties if you consider across the grain vs against the grain (which is the reason a lot of speakers use [MDF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-density_fibreboard) like materials as medium, as it can be more uniform).
tl;dr Sound uses things to travel, some things are better for sound traveling due to their physical and chemical properties.
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