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Sound

Sound is produced by vibrating objects that cause vibrations in a medium like air, water or solid materials. These vibrations travel as longitudinal waves through the medium, transmitting energy. The human ear can detect sounds between 20-20,000 Hz. Ultrasound has frequencies above this range and is used for cleaning, quality control, and medical imaging like viewing babies in the womb. Echoes occur when sound waves reflect off surfaces, allowing the distance to a reflecting surface to be calculated if the time delay of the echo is measured.

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164 views

Sound

Sound is produced by vibrating objects that cause vibrations in a medium like air, water or solid materials. These vibrations travel as longitudinal waves through the medium, transmitting energy. The human ear can detect sounds between 20-20,000 Hz. Ultrasound has frequencies above this range and is used for cleaning, quality control, and medical imaging like viewing babies in the womb. Echoes occur when sound waves reflect off surfaces, allowing the distance to a reflecting surface to be calculated if the time delay of the echo is measured.

Uploaded by

Tatenda Chirobe
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Production Of Sound

Sound is a mechanical wave phenomenon and is normally associated with our


sense of hearing. Sound is a property of vibrating objects.
 Sound is produced by vibrating sources in a material medium.
Medium can be any gas, liquid or solid.
 The vibrating sources set the particles of a medium in vibration in
such a way that sound travels outwards in the form of longitudinal
waves.
 Some of the energy of the vibrations are transmitted over a distance.
Examples of vibrating sources:
 Musical instruments, like drums, guitar
 Hitting a piece of iron with a hammer
 Loudspeakers (Consists of a cone which vibrates under the effects
of electricity and magnetism)
 Explosion resulting from explosives.

Propagation Of Sound Waves

Tuning Fork

Vibration in the tuning fork produces disturbances in the surrounding air. When
the prongs’ movement is outwards, the prongs push the surrounding air
molecules away, creating a local compression.
This disturbance of air layers is then passed from molecule to molecule by
collisions, causing the local compression to move outwardly.

When the prongs’ movement is inwards, a partial void, or rarefaction is created.


Pressure differences causes the air molecules to rush back into the region again.
This periodic to-and-fro movement of the prongs will create alternating regions of
compressions and rarefactions. The sound waves span outwardly parallel to the
direction of the wave propagation (longitudinal nature).

 In air, compressions are regions where the pressure is higher than


surrounding air and rarefactions are regions where pressure is lower
than the surrounding air.
Notes:

 The energy of the sound waves is propagated and carried by


colliding particles of a material medium. Hence, a (material) medium
is required in order to transmit these (energy) waves.
 The speed of energy propagation is dependent on the proximity of
these particles in a medium. Hence, given that the proximity of
particles in the air, liquids or solids is different, the speed of sound
differs in air, liquids and solids. Sound travels faster in denser
media. It travels faster in liquids than in gases and fastest in solids.

Range of Audible Frequencies


The human ear responds to sounds with frequencies in the range from 20 Hz to
20,000 Hz. This is called the audible range of the human ear. Examples of
vibrating sources that produce sound in the audible range of frequencies are
drums, guitar strings, tuning fork, human vocal cords and diaphragms of
loudspeakers.

In audible sound waves whose frequencies are less than 20 Hz are in the
infrasonic range. Sources of infrasonic waves include earthquakes, thunder,
volcanoes and waves produced by vibrating heavy machinery. The hearing
ranges of elephants and whales extend into the infrasonic region.
SS: Determining The Speed of Sound
In Air
The speed of sound can be calculated with only two measurements:

 the distance of the sound source from the receiver


 the time taken for the sound wave to travel that distance
 

speed=distancetravelledtimespeed=distancetravelledtime
 

Precautions taken to reduce measurement errors:


 Exchange the positions of the sound source and the measuring
device and repeat the experiment. It will reduce the effect of wind on
the speed of sound in air.
 Repeat the experiment several times and take the average value of
the time intervals recorded to calculated the average speed of
sound.

Frequencies above 20,000 Hz are in the ultrasonic range. The audible range of
dogs, cats, moths and mice extends into ultrasound frequencies. They can hear
very high frequencies that humans cannot.

  SS: Loudness and Pitch


The human ear can distinguish two characteristics of sound. These are the
loudness and pitch, and each refers to a sensation in the consciousness of the
listener.
 

Loudness
 It is easy to distinguish among loud and soft sounds. The term
loudness of a sound is self-descriptive. It depends primarily on the
amplitude of the sound wave.
 The larger the amplitude, the louder the sound.
 

Note: The standard unit of sound level is decibel. A sound is judged to be twice


as loud as another, if its sound level is about 10 decibels higher. The reason why
it is 10 and not twice the value is that decibel is a logarithmic unit.
 

Pitch 
 The pitch of a sound refers to whether it is high (sharp), like the
sound of a violin, or low, like the sound of a bass drum. The physical
quantity that determines pitch is the frequency.
 The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch.

Ultrasound

Ultrasound is the sound with frequencies higher than 20,000 hertz.


Ultrasound Image
 

Use of ultrasound
 Ultrasound is used to clean street lights by immersing the lighting
unit in a tank of water and using ultrasonic waves to dislodge the
dust particles from the surface of the unit. It is also used to clean
jewelry and intricate mechanical and electronic components and
weld plastics.
 Other application of ultrasound is in quality control of metals and
meat. Ultrasound is used to detect the position of flaws in metal and
in determining the thickness of lean and fat meat in livestock while
the animals are still alive.
 Ultrasound is used to form images of babies in the womb (prenatal
scanning). High frequency ultrasound, typically 3.5 million Hz, is sent
into the body and is partially reflected as it encounters different
types of tissue. These reflections are used to form an image on a
television monitor. Ultrasound is also used to provide images of the
heart, liver, kidneys, gal bladder, breast, eye, and major blood
vessels.
 In hospitals, ultrasonic power is used to pulverise kidney stones,
thus avoiding the need for surgical removal.
 Automatic focusing cameras use ultrasonic echo-location to
determine the distance being photographed.
Echo
Sound waves can be reflected by large, hard surfaces like buildings, walls and
cliffs. Reflection of sound occurs just like the reflection of light.
 

Echo is a distinct, reflected sound wave from a surface.

 A reflected sound can be heard separately from the original sound if


the sound source is closer to the receiver while the reflecting hard
surface is sufficiently far from receiver. Such reflected sound is
called an echo.
 Generally the reflected sound is not distinctly heard, as it follows so
closely behind the original sound and prolongs the sensation of the
original sound. This effect is called reverberation.
 If the surface is rough, the incident sound waves are broken up and
the original waveform is lost, thus no reflected sounds are heard. To
reduce the effects of echo, walls can be roughened or “softened”
(with padding) or covered with curtains and floors covered with
carpets.
 Principle of echo is used in echo sounder to find the depth of a sea
or the location of shoals of fish. Echoes can be used to measure the
speed of sound.
Note: Remember that the distance travelled by the sound is doubled for echo.
(The sound “go there and come back”) For instance, if a sound wave takes 10
seconds to travel to the bottom of the sea and back, the total distance travelled
is 2d, where d is the depth of the sea.
Hence, the velocity of the sound for echoes can be calculated by:

v=Total distance travelled by soundTime taken=2dt

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