How do sounds travel

Speaking as well as hearing involves vibrations. To speak, we move air past our vocal cords, which makes them vibrate. We change the sounds we make by stretching those vocal cords. When the vocal cords are stretched we make high sounds and when they are loose we make lower sounds. This is known as the pitch of the sound. The sounds we hear every day are actually collections of simpler sounds. A musical sound is called a tone.

If we strike a tuning fork, it gives off a pure tone, which is the sound of a single frequency. But if we were to sing or play a note on a trumpet or violin, the result is a combination of one main frequency with other tones. This gives each musical instrument its characteristic sound. Science World YouTube Sound.

Canada Science and Technology Museum Strin-o-lin. Online Tuning Forks. Science Kids at Home What is Sound? Sound is all about vibrations. Objectives Describe how sound is produced. Understand how our inner ear contributes to hearing. List some properties of sound. Sound travels faster through a solid than it does through a liquid. No matter the speed, sound is always transmitted as compression waves from a source through a medium.

Home Modules Physical processes Sound How does sound travel? How does sound travel? Try all of Tigtag's videos and learning resources today! By: Jonathan Strickland. Sound travels in mechanical waves. A mechanical wave is a disturbance that moves and transports energy from one place to another through a medium.

In sound, the disturbance is a vibrating object. And the medium can be any series of interconnected and interactive particles. This means that sound can travel through gases, liquids and solids. Let's take a look at an example. Imagine a church bell. When a bell rings, it vibrates, which means the bell itself flexes inward and outward very rapidly. As the bell moves outward, it pushes against particles of air. Those air particles then push against other adjacent air particles, and so on.

It also moves 3x faster in helium than in ordinary air. You know the funny voices you talk in when you breathe in helium? This happens because the waves travel faster and in higher frequency. The impressive organ allows us to hear all kinds of sounds at different frequencies and distances.

The waves travel from the outer ear and through the auditory canal. This causes the eardrum to vibrate which then causes the ossicles to move. The vibrations move with the oval window through the fluid in the inner ear which then stimulates many tiny hair cells. As a result, the vibrations transform into an electrical impulse that our brain perceives as sound.

Sound always travels in waves regardless of whether it goes through a gas, liquid or a solid medium. They move by particles that collide with one another. The bond between molecules is usually much weaker, and it keeps breaking and re-forming.

Once the pressure is raised at least a little bit, the liquid causes the particles to move to areas with lower pressure. These molecules then push those that are already there causing the pressure to grow in the area. Molecules have inertia, so they usually go farther than it takes to even out the pressure. The process repeats until the waves carry the energy away. The best example of this are the multiple waves that spread out from where you drop a rock in the water.

Gases react much like the liquids. Since they are less dense, gases are more compressible. Sound travels faster when the materials are less dense and more compressed. The compressibility change has a more significant effect on the wave than when the density changes. If you ever thought about what sound is and how it travels, you probably also thought about music instruments. They are all essentially the same thing, producing sound waves with the same frequency and amplitude.

So how they sound different? Most people think how waves are identical, but the instruments vibrate differently from one another. Every instrument produces lots and lots of different waves at the same time. The fundamental wave is the basic one and the one that has a specific amplitude and pitch. Higher-pitched sounds are harmonics also known as overtones.

This means that every instrument makes a pattern of fundamental frequencies and overtones called timbre.