Great Source Science Education Group, Inc.

(2002) ScienceSaurus: A student

handbook. Wilmington, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Sound
Did you hear that? Sound is all around you: clocks ticking, horns blowing, feet
shuffling, babies crying.
Sound is produced when an object vibrates. The vibrating object pushes the
particles of matter next to it and causes them to compress (squeeze together).
That compressed matter, in turn, compresses the matter next to it. The
compression travels through the matter as a wave of energy. Sound waves
travel in all directions away from their source. Sound waves are longitudinal
waves.

Unlike light, sound waves need a medium (matter) to travel through. Sound
cannot exist in a vacuum. Like light, sound travels at different speeds through
different materials. In general, sound travels faster through solids than through
liquids, and faster through liquids than through gases. Sound waves also travel
faster through a warmer medium than through a cooler medium.
Material

Speed of Sound (m/s)

Steel

5200

Glass

4540

Oak wood

3850

Silver

3650

Water

1520

Cork

500

Air

330

Sound travels more

slowly than light. Thats
why you usually see a
flash of lightning before
you hear thunder. The
thunder and lightning
happen at the same time,
but the light reaches your
eyes before the sound of
the thunder does.

Properties of Sound
How would you describe a sound? Is it loud or soft? High or low? Soothing or jarring?
The properties of sound depend in large part on the amplitude and frequency of the
sound waves.

Amplitude and Loudness

Amplitude is the distance a wave oscillates from its resting position. The
greater the amplitude of the sound wave, the louder the sound. Loudness is
measured in units called decibels (dB). The softest sound that can be heard by
the human ear is assigned a decibel level of 0. The average human can hear
sounds between 0 and 120 decibels. Beyond that, the energy of the sound
waves is so great that it can injure your ears.
Sound
Rustling leaves
Whisper
Normal conversation
Vacuum cleaner
Lawn mower
Rock concert
Jet engine at takeoff

Decibel (dB) Level

10
30
65
75
100
120
150

Frequency and Pitch

Frequency is the number of waves
produced in a given time. The frequency
of a sound wave determines its pitch, or
how high or low the sound is. The higher
the frequency of a sound wave, the higher
the pitch. Most humans can perceive
sound waves within a frequency range of
20 to 20,000 Hz, or waves per second.
Decibel (dB) Le

Loudness and pitch

are not related. A
high-pitched sound
can be soft and a
low-pitched sound
can be loud.

The Doppler Effect

Imagine that you are standing on a corner as an ambulance rushes by. As the ambulance passes, the
sound of the siren changes from a high pitch to a lower pitch. Why? Do the sound waves produced
by the siren change as the ambulance goes by? How does the motion of the ambulance affect the
sound?

Pitch is determined by the frequency of sound waves

The pitch of a sound, how high or low it is, is determined by the frequency at which sound waves
strike the eardrum in your ear. A higher-pitched sound is caused by sound waves of higher frequency. As you know from the wave speed equation, frequency and wavelength are also related to
the speed of a wave.
Suppose you could see the sound waves from the ambulance siren when the ambulance is at rest.
You would see the sound waves traveling out from the siren in circular wave fronts, as shown in
Figure 10-15. The distance between two successive wave fronts shows the wavelength of the sound
waves. When the sound waves reach your ears, they have a frequency equal to the number of wave
fronts that strike your eardrum each second. That frequency determines the pitch of the sound that
you hear.

Frequency changes when the source of waves is moving

If the ambulance is moving toward you, the sound waves from the siren are compressed in the
direction of motion, as shown in Figure 10-15. Between the time that one sound wave and the next
sound wave are emitted by the siren, the ambulance moves a short distance. This shortens the
distance between successive wave fronts. As a result, the sound waves reach your ear at a faster rate,
that is, at a higher frequency.
Because the waves now have a higher frequency, you hear a higher-pitched sound than you would if
the ambulance were at rest. Similarly, if the ambulance were moving away from you, the frequency
at which the waves reached your ear would be less than if the ambulance were at rest, and you would
hear the sound of the siren at a lower pitch. This change in the observed frequency of a wave
resulting from the motion of the source or observer is called the Doppler effect. The Doppler effect
occurs for light and other types of waves as well.
Figure 10-15
When an ambulance is not moving, the
sound waves produced by the siren
spread out in circles. The frequency of
the waves is the same at any location.

When an ambulance is moving, the sound waves

produced by the siren are closer together in front
and farther apart behind. Observer A hears a
higher-pitched sound than Observer B hears.