How does sound travel? – Quora

How does sound travel? Does it move in a vacuum? As many people ask about physical phenomena, the most important of which is sound, the mechanism of its transmission through things and to the human ear, and the vibrations that make up the different sound waves, which is what he will present to you. Idea site.

How does sound travel

In contrast to light, sound needs a physical medium to travel through, whether it is a gas like air, a liquid like water, or a solid like iron, for example:

• When the alarm rings, what is heard is energy that starts from the source to the receiver’s ear via the waves it generates.

• Where the ringing starts from the designated place inside the alarm, then it is transmitted through the air by causing vibration in this medium.

• Then the air molecules begin to collide and transfer energy to each other, until they reach the ear, to cause another vibration in the eardrum that enables the individual to sense this sound.

• All sound waves propagate in physical media in the form of vibrations that cause compressions and rarefactions of the medium in which they are propagated.

• So the energy is transmitted through the particles of the material that it passes through, and the sound spreads in the materials in the form of a vibrating wave in the same direction as the movement of the wave propagation, and subject to all the laws of physics.

What is the sound

In light of our knowledge of how sound is transmitted, we know that sound is one of the physical phenomena, which is defined as vibration or disturbance in the surrounding medium, as:

• Sound travels through any physical medium by the transfer of energy from one object to another.

• Sound can be heard when it travels and reaches the human or animal ear.

sound transmission mechanism

When an object vibrates, it transfers its energy to the molecules around it and makes them vibrate and turbulence, then:

• These particles begin to collide again with the particles next to them.

• Which also makes it vibrate, and that way the sound is transmitted.

• That is, sound can be defined as the energy that things around us produce when they vibrate.

sound properties

After knowing how sound is transmitted, we know that there are many distinctive characteristics of sound, the most important of which are:

• wave length:
  It is the distance that a sound travels in one cycle and varies with different sounds.
• Density:
  It is the amount of auditory energy that is within the limits of human hearing.
• the size
  : Each sound has a specific volume that depends on its intensity.
• carrier medium:
  Since sound needs a carrier medium, sound does not travel in a vacuum.

• the speed.

• indecision.

• jamming.

• deviation.

• reflection.

types of sounds

There are many classifications of different types of voice, but one of the most famous of these classifications is the one that divided sounds into two types, namely:

• Audible voice

• The inaudible sound, and the inaudible sounds within their sound waves are divided into two main parts:

1- Ultrasound

These are all sound waves that have frequencies above 20.00 Hz, also:

• Ultrasound occurs at frequencies outside the range of human hearing, meaning humans are unable to hear them.

• Ultrasound is used in medicine to examine the internal organs of patients.

• Also in imaging and mixing samples.

• Bats emit ultrasound, which makes them able to accurately locate prey and avoid obstacles while flying.

2- Infrasound

They are all sound waves that have frequencies less than 20 hertz, which makes them inaudible to the human ear. Infrasound is used in many applications, such as:

• Detection of earthquakes and volcanoes.

• Underground oil mapping.

• Study of activity in the human heart.

• Although humans cannot hear infrasound, many animals use infrasound to communicate in nature such as: whales, rhinos, crocodiles, and giraffes.

• Sometimes these sounds can reach hundreds of miles away.

The speed of sound

Sound does not travel in a vacuum. Therefore, the speed of sound can be defined as:

• The speed at which sound waves propagate in different media.

• It differs from one medium to another, as the speed of sound depends on the elasticity and density of the medium in which it travels.

• The speed of sound is highest in solids.

• Followed by liquids, then gases.

• This is because of how far away the particles of matter are from each other.

• Since the greater the distance between the particles, the slower the speed of sound transmission.

Does sound travel in a vacuum?

Sound does not travel in a vacuum, because:

• Sound needs a physical medium to travel through and is known as the medium.

• The medium can be air, water, glass or metal.

sound transmission terms

There are several conditions on which sound transmission depends, as sound can transmit and be audible to the human ear if:

• There is an acoustic source responsible for generating the vibrations.

• There should be a physical medium between the ear and the source of the sound that helps the transmission of the sound, as the sound does not travel in a vacuum.

• The frequency of the sound waves should be within the range audible to the human ear.

• The sound should be strong enough to be felt by the ear.

Acoustics is an interdisciplinary science concerned with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids as well as solids, including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound.