The Physics of the Sound Wave and its Effects on the Human Ear

A sound wave is a disturbance that repeats regularly in space and time and that transmits energy from one place to another with no transfer of matter. In Activity 2 on page 8 we had to model sound waves using an instrument. In our class we used a flute as the example and when the person blew into it, sound waves were produced. As they blew and changed the volume and pitch the sound waves changed. A sound wave is created when something vibrates. When something vibrates, longitudinal waves are created which we can hear. A longitudinal wave is a wave that transfers energy through compressions and rarefactions in the material that the wave travels which are all parts of a sound wave. In Activity 2 it states in some parts of the wave, the air molecules

In the podcast, Sound as Touch, Radiolab conducted a study in which parents and infants were recorded to find a pattern of common tunes in the interaction, crossing all cultural barriers. When parents of different languages expressed happiness to their infants, there was rise and fall in the melody. Sound is like touch and even scientifically this makes sense. Jonah in the podcast explains that waves vibrate and travel into the listener’s ears and more specifically moving the ear bones. This way, hairs stimulate electricity and ingrains into our brain, which results in sounds.

When a person with normal hearing hears the sound travels along the ear then bounces against the ear drum. The eardrum, the bones inside, and the cochlea vibrate and move thousands of tiny hairs inside the ear. When these hairs move an electrical response occurs. This electrical response goes to the hearing nerve and then it is send to the brain.

These averages we determined from the trials can be compared to the accepted speed of sound (344.2 m/s in this specific temperature), and we determine the relative error percentages:

The sound waves are produced by a random oscillating crystal, and are inaudible to humans. A instrument called a

This essay will reflect my thoughts on chapter 9. In brief this chapter deals with how the ears allow us to be able to hear and process sound. When I first think of sound I think of the frequency. This makes me think of songs that I listen too in order to determine it 's a high frequency or a low frequency. I 'll be able to determine the amount of hertz that are in songs on the radio. I do feel that it would be hard to determine because most of that music is reordered, hearing people sing a cappella would be easier to determine the amount of hertz present. I know what hertz are, but I 'm still not sure how they are actually determined? Are they sounds just determined by our brain if we have unimpaired hearing. How would someone like my brother with a whole in his ear be able to determine frequency?

The purpose of this experiment is to measure the speed of sound in air and to determine the effects of frequency on the speed of sound.

Sound waves are nothing more than an energy transfer through a medium be it through a liquid, solid, or a gas. Sound pressure or intensity is measured on logarithmic scale in decibels dB which increases on an order of magnitude. For instance a quiet conversation would be around 30 dB and whereas the human pain threshold would be just over 100 dB. While the pitch or frequency of the sound is measured in hertz or Hz, the higher the hertz the higher the pitch of the sound and vice versa (Hildebrand, 2004).

Detects different physical characteristics of pressure waves: • Pitch: perception of the frequency of sound waves (umber of wavelengths that pass a fixed point in a unit of time) • Loudness: the perception of the intensity of sound (the pressure exerted by sound

The first way sound works as energy. Sound is the release of energy, so of course sound is everywhere. In the article "Sound is Everywhere", Jason Torres states that, "The sound energy is released in the form of vibrations, the vibrations emit

According to Gill (2012,p. 11) the equation for Acoustic impedance is Z=ρc, where (Z=Acoustic impedance, ρ =density of medium and c =velocity of beam). From this equation is understood that acoustic

The snail like shape of the cochlear effectively boosts the strength of the vibrations caused by sound, especially for low pitches. When sound waves hit the ear drum, tiny bones in the ear transmit the vibrations to the fluid of the cochlea, where they travel along a tube that winds into a spiral. The tube’s properties gradually change along its length, so the waves grow and then die away, much as an ocean wave travelling towards the shore gets taller and narrower before breaking at the beach.

Sound is a wave, and a wave can be remembered as a medium, carrying energy from one point to another. The sound wave has a resemblance of a slinky in its nature, for many reasons. The disturbance goes from one place to another, carried by the medium. Typically, the medium will carry energy through the air, although it could be any substance like water and steel. There is an original source of the wave; anything from someone’s vibrating vocal chords, or a tuning fork. Then, the sound is transported through the medium through particle-to-particle interaction. If the sound wave is moving through the

It is within this framework that I consider important to study the way in which sound is

What is a sound wave? A sound wave is produced by a mechanical vibration, such as a tuning fork. The vibrating object causes the surrounding medium, such as air, to vibrate as well.The wave travels through the medium to a detector, like your ear, and it is heard.As with any type of wave, a sound wave is also described by it's wavelength, amplitude, period, and frequency.