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Sound Notes

Sound travels as vibrations through air or other materials, creating longitudinal waves characterized by compressions and rarefactions. It requires a medium to travel and cannot move through a vacuum, with applications in sonar, material testing, and medical imaging. Human hearing ranges from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, and sound properties such as amplitude and frequency can be measured using oscilloscopes.

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4 views2 pages

Sound Notes

Sound travels as vibrations through air or other materials, creating longitudinal waves characterized by compressions and rarefactions. It requires a medium to travel and cannot move through a vacuum, with applications in sonar, material testing, and medical imaging. Human hearing ranges from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, and sound properties such as amplitude and frequency can be measured using oscilloscopes.

Uploaded by

crystalcollector19
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

How Does Sound Travel?

●​ Sound is a series of vibrations passing through air or another material.


●​ The source vibrates and makes particles vibrate back and forth in the direction
the sound is travelling.
●​ These vibrations create sound waves, which are longitudinal waves.​

More About Sound Waves


●​ Vibrations cause compressions and rarefactions in air.
●​ Compressions: regions where air particles are pushed together.
●​ Rarefactions: regions where air particles are further apart.
●​ A tuning fork demo shows how vibrations move through air.
●​ Sound waves need a medium to travel and cannot travel through a vacuum.​

Applications of Ultrasound
●​ Sonar: Used to measure water depth and locate objects underwater using sound
pulses.
●​ Calculate depth using echo time and speed of sound in water.
●​ Material Testing: Ultrasound detects flaws/cracks in materials.
●​ Medical Uses: Ultrasound imaging shows development of a fetus.​

Hearing Sounds
●​ Human hearing range: 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz.
●​ Range decreases with age or exposure to loud sounds.
●​ Frequencies above 20,000 Hz are called ultrasound, which are not audible to
humans but used by some animals (e.g. dolphins).​

Seeing and Hearing Sounds


●​ Microphone and oscilloscope can represent sound visually.
●​ The oscilloscope displays sound wave vibrations as lines.
●​ Pure notes from signal generators are simple to measure; musical notes are
more complex.​

Sound in Different Mediums and Speed of Sound


●​ Sound needs a material (solid, liquid, or gas) to travel through and cannot travel
in a vacuum (e.g. space).
●​ Sun emits sound due to solar flares but cannot be heard because space is a
vacuum.
●​ Sound travels at 330–350 m/s in air; this is slower than light.
●​ An echo is a reflected sound wave, used to measure speed of sound for distance
calculations.​

Oscilloscopes and Sound Properties


●​ Oscilloscopes measure amplitude (height of wave) and frequency (number of
waves per second).
●​ Amplitude relates to loudness, frequency to pitch.
●​ Instruments have different patterns due to overtones (violin, piano, etc.).
●​ High frequency = high pitch; large amplitude = loud sound.​

Optical fibers are extremely thin glass or plastic strands that transmit light signals over
long distances, used widely in telecommunications such as telephone, internet, and
cable television. They work by reflecting light internally along the fiber, allowing the
transfer of large amounts of data quickly and efficiently without losing signal quality.
High-purity glass fibers are capable of carrying thousands of signals simultaneously,
making modern communication possible.​

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