Properties of Sound Waves
Sound is a ______that can be heard.
What is Vibration
What is a wavelength?
The distance from one compression to the next
What does the speed of sound measure?
How fast sound travels through the air under specific atmospheric conditions
What is pitch?
how high or low a sound is
What is the difference between sound and noise?
noise is usually unwanted or unpleasant
A _____ is a disturbance that moves energy from place to place
Wave
What does an oscilloscope do?
it changes mechanical waves into electrical pictures
why do sound waves move faster through solids?
solids are denser
what is volume?
How loud or soft a sound is
what do pleasant calm sounds look like on an oscilloscope?
Smooth curves
What states of matter can a sound wave travel through?
solids, liquids, and gases
What is frequency?
the number of sound waves that pass a point in one second
what determines the length of a wavelength?
how quickly the source of the sound vibrates
What is Timbre
the quality of a sound
what do harsh sounds look like on an oscilloscope?
Jagged and rough
What do most of the sound waves that we hear travel through?
the air
What unit is used to measure frequency?
The hertz
Why does a sound wave travel the most slowly through a gas?
Because gas particles are spread farther apart
Why do dogs have the ability to hear a dog whistle but humans cannot?
They are able to hear higher frequencies of sound than humans
what can music communicate to people?
ideas and feelings
Which state of matter is air mostly made up of?
gases
what characteristic of sound changes as a sound moves through different types of matter?
The speed of the wave
Why is there no sound in space?
space is a vacuum without particles
Define the word decibel
The intensity of a sound
What kind of surfaces usually cause echoes
smooth hard surfaces.
What kind of waves can only move through matter?
mechanical waves
What property of matter affects how fast and how far the sound wave can travel?
the density of the matter
How is the speed of a sound wave different from its frequency?
Speed is how fast the sound is moving, frequency is the number of waves that pass a point in one second
How many decibels is a whisper
20
How does the human ear process sound?
by changing the sound vibrations into electrical messages the the brain interprets