Standing Wave Patterns
As mentioned earlier, all objects have a frequency or set of frequencies with which they naturally vibrate when struck, plucked, strummed or somehow disturbed. Each of the natural frequencies at…
Forced Vibration
Musical instruments and other objects are set into vibration at their natural frequency when a person hits, strikes, strums, plucks or somehow disturbs the object. For instance, a guitar string is strummed…
Resonance and Standing Waves
Natural Frequency As has been previously mentioned in this unit, a sound wave is created as a result of a vibrating object. The vibrating object is the source of the disturbance that…
Boundary Behavior
As a sound wave travels through a medium, it will often reach the end of the medium and encounter an obstacle or perhaps another medium through which it could travel.…
The Doppler Effect and Shock Waves
The Doppler effect is a phenomenon observed whenever the source of waves is moving with respect to an observer. The Doppler effect can be described as the effect produced by a moving source of…
Behavior of Sound Waves
Interference and Beats Wave interference is the phenomenon that occurs when two waves meet while traveling along the same medium. The interference of waves causes the medium to take on a…
The Human Ear
Understanding how humans hear is a complex subject involving the fields of physiology, psychology and acoustics. In this part of Lesson 2, we will focus on the acoustics (the branch…
The Speed of Sound
A sound wave is a pressure disturbance that travels through a medium by means of particle-to-particle interaction. As one particle becomes disturbed, it exerts a force on the next adjacent particle, thus…
Intensity and the Decibel Scale
Sound waves are introduced into a medium by the vibration of an object. For example, a vibrating guitar string forces surrounding air molecules to be compressed and expanded, creating a…
Sound Properties and Their Perception
Pitch and Frequency A sound wave, like any other wave, is introduced into a medium by a vibrating object. The vibrating object is the source of the disturbance that moves…
