How Do Sound Waves Travel?
Characteristics of Sound Waves
The speed and the physical characteristics of sound largely varies with the change in its ambient conditions. The speed of sound depends on the density of the medium though which it is traveling. If its density is quite high, then sound would travel at a very slow pace.
The frequency of sound waves is nothing but the total number of vibrations that have been produced. The length of sound waves vary according to its frequency. Sound waves with long wavelengths have low frequency or low pitch and those with short wavelengths have high frequency or high pitch.
How do Sound Waves Travel?
Basically, there are three things that are required for the transmission of sound. They are: a source that can transmit the sound, a medium through which sound can pass (like, water, air, etc.) and the receiver or the detector which receives the sound.
Creation of Sound
When a physical object moves in air, it causes vibrations which leads to formation of a series of compression waves in the air. These waves travel in the form of sound. For instance, when we strum the strings of a guitar or hit the head of a drum, the to-and-fro motion of the strings or the drum head creates compression waves of sound in the surrounding air. Similarly, when we speak, our vocal cords vibrate and the sound is created. This type of vibration occurs not just in atmospheric air but in other mediums like, solids and liquids as well.
At room temperature, sound travels through air with a speed of 343m/s, through fresh water at 1,482m/s and through steel at 5,960m/s. As you can see, sound waves travel in a gaseous medium at a slow pace because its molecules are loosely bound and have to cover a long distance to collide with another molecule. In solid medium, the atoms are so closely packed that the vibration is readily transmitted to the neighboring atoms and sound travels quite fast. In liquid medium, the bonding between the component particles are not as strong as in solids.
Detection of Sound
When the sound waves hit the receiver, it causes some vibration in that object. The detector captures just a part of the energy from the moving sound wave. This energy of vibration is then converted to electrical signals. Thus, when the sound waves reach our ears, the eardrum present inside it vibrates. This vibration reaches our inner ear and is converted into nerve signals. As a result, we can hear the sound.
Hope you have understood how sound travels from one point to another from this article. The summary of the mechanism of propagation of sound goes like this. Sound causes disturbances in its medium by vibrations. These vibrations induce compressive motions. At the receiving end, the sound waves create some vibrations on the receiver. This vibe is perceived as sound by our ears.
Sound Waves for Kids
#1: Have you ever tried to figure out the concept, when you stand in a particular room and talk, how your voice gets carried to another person across that room?
#2: Remember, one of the most simplest experiment we all have done during our school times in our science books; sound waves traveling through a simple handmade string telephone? Wherein, we take two cups of cardboard and punch a hole at its bottom, attach a 12m-15m string to it and communicate with each other! We are actually dealing with sound waves out here.
#3: Creative at music? Then bet you must have tried some fancy music on empty bottles in your pastime? Playing bottle music is one of the most common sound waves for kids experiments that you children can learn about. All you have to do is explore how the liquid and volume affects the sound waves in different bottles.
If you are a kid who is crazy about science and its experiments, then you probably have a gist of an idea about all the above mentioned activities based on sound waves. If not, let me brief you in short regarding what sound waves are and how they move!
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