  We investigate sound wave propagation in a monatomic gas using a volume-based
hydrodynamic model. In Physica A vol 387(24) (2008) pp6079-6094, a microscopic
volume-based kinetic approach was proposed by analyzing molecular spatial
distributions; this led to a set of hydrodynamic equations incorporating a
mass-density diffusion component. Here we find that these new mass-density
diffusive flux and volume terms mean that our hydrodynamic model, uniquely,
reproduces sound wave phase speed and damping measurements with excellent
agreement over the full range of Knudsen number. In the high Knudsen number
(high frequency) regime, our volume-based model predictions agree with the
plane standing waves observed in the experiments, which existing kinetic and
continuum models have great difficulty in capturing. In that regime, our
results indicate that the "sound waves" presumed in the experiments may be
better thought of as "mass-density waves", rather than the pressure waves of
the continuum regime.
