What Is Sound?
Sound A. What is the definition of Sound?
Sound is everything that a person, animal or computer can hear. It can be created in a countless number of ways and occurs from anything as simple as tapping on a table.
All sounds are a series of vibrations that travel through a medium in all possible directions. The cause of sound is the vibration of an object; once the item vibrates the sound waves then radiate outwards until they are either stopped or they die out. A sound wave has three characteristics: Frequency, amplitude and phase. These three allow us to measure pitch, speed and potentially the energy of the wave as well.
Sound travels when particles interact with each other when a sound source effect the first particle of a medium. This then causes the particle to vibrate backwards and forwards which then means that the particle collides with its neighbouring particles causing them to shift in the exact 0.4cm
0.4cm
0.5cm
0.5cm
0.6cm
0.6cm
0.7cm
0.7cm
0.8cm
0.8cm
0.9cm
0.9cm
1cm
1cm
same manner.
The diagram above shows a tuning fork that when struck it sends vibrations outwards towards particles which are then flung backwards and forwards into eachother as the cycle progresses. The measurements show the distance each particle travels when it is hit, this decreases as the wave gets longer because there is less energy travelling through it. The overall result of this the further you are away from the sound source the quiter the sound will be because the energy levels in the wave would have decreased.
During a cycle, a wave will go through two different stages ‘compression’ and ‘rarefaction’. Compression is when a high number of particles are all bunched together almost as a block which means a wave moves freely through the medium however, when this block ends paticles will shoot off the edge in order to find different particles to collide with. This leads them into a more open space where there aren’t as many particles and they are
Sound is everything that a person, animal or computer can hear. It can be created in a countless number of ways and occurs from anything as simple as tapping on a table.
All sounds are a series of vibrations that travel through a medium in all possible directions. The cause of sound is the vibration of an object; once the item vibrates the sound waves then radiate outwards until they are either stopped or they die out. A sound wave has three characteristics: Frequency, amplitude and phase. These three allow us to measure pitch, speed and potentially the energy of the wave as well.
Sound travels when particles interact with each other when a sound source effect the first particle of a medium. This then causes the particle to vibrate backwards and forwards which then means that the particle collides with its neighbouring particles causing them to shift in the exact 0.4cm
0.4cm
0.5cm
0.5cm
0.6cm
0.6cm
0.7cm
0.7cm
0.8cm
0.8cm
0.9cm
0.9cm
1cm
1cm
same manner.
The diagram above shows a tuning fork that when struck it sends vibrations outwards towards particles which are then flung backwards and forwards into eachother as the cycle progresses. The measurements show the distance each particle travels when it is hit, this decreases as the wave gets longer because there is less energy travelling through it. The overall result of this the further you are away from the sound source the quiter the sound will be because the energy levels in the wave would have decreased.
During a cycle, a wave will go through two different stages ‘compression’ and ‘rarefaction’. Compression is when a high number of particles are all bunched together almost as a block which means a wave moves freely through the medium however, when this block ends paticles will shoot off the edge in order to find different particles to collide with. This leads them into a more open space where there aren’t as many particles and they are