Sound Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a longitudinal wave.

Sound is characterized by the properties of sound waves, which are frequency, wavelength, period, amplitude, and speed. Humans perceive sound by the sense of hearing. By sound, we commonly mean the vibrations that travel through air and can be heard by humans. However, scientists and engineers use a wider definition of sound that includes low and high frequency vibrations in air that cannot be heard by humans, and vibrations that travel through all forms of matter, gases, liquids and solids. The matter that supports the sound is called the medium. Sound propagates as waves of alternating pressure, causing local regions of compression and rarefaction. Particles in the medium are displaced by the wave and oscillate. The scientific study of sound is called acoustics. Noise is often used to refer to an unwanted sound. In science and engineering, noise is an undesirable component that obscures a wanted signal. Perception of sound

A schematic representation of hearing. (Blue: sound waves. Red: eardrum. Yellow: cochlea. Green: auditory receptor cells. Purple: frequency spectrum of hearing response. Orange: nerve impulse) Sound is perceived through the sense of hearing. Humans and many animals use their ears to hear sound, but loud sounds and low-frequency sounds can be perceived by other parts of the body through the sense of touch as vibrations. Sounds are used in several ways, notably for communication through speech and music. They can also be used to acquire information about properties of the surrounding environment such as spatial characteristics and presence of other animals or objects. For example, bats use echolocation, ships and submarines use sonar and humans can determine spatial information by the way in which they perceive sounds. Humans can generally hear sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz (the audio range) although this range varies significantly with age, occupational hearing damage, and gender; the majority of people can no

longer hear 20,000 Hz by the time they are teenagers, and progressively lose the ability to hear higher frequencies as they get older. Most human speech communication takes place between 200 and 8,000 Hz and the human ear is most sensitive to frequencies around 1000-3,500 Hz. Sound above the hearing range is known as ultrasound, and that below the hearing range as infrasound. The amplitude of a sound wave is specified in terms of its pressure. The human ear can detect sounds with a very wide range of amplitudes and so a logarithmic decibel amplitude scale is used. The quietest sounds that humans can hear have an amplitude of approximately 20 Pa (micropascals) or a sound pressure level (SPL) of 0 dB re 20 Pa (often incorrectly abbreviated as 0 dB SPL). Prolonged exposure to a sound pressure level exceeding 85 dB can permanently damage the ear, resulting in tinnitus and hearing impairment. Sound levels in excess of 130 dB are more than the human ear can safely withstand and can result in serious pain and permanent damage. At very high amplitudes, sound waves exhibit nonlinear effects, including shock. Speed of sound The speed at which sound travels depends on the medium through which the waves are passing, and is often quoted as a fundamental property of the material. In general, the speed of sound is proportional to the square root of the ratio of the elastic modulus (stiffness) of the medium and its density. Those physical properties and the speed of sound change with ambient conditions. For example, the speed of sound in air and other gases depends on temperature. In air, the speed of sound is approximately 344 m/s, in water 1500 m/s and in a bar of steel 5000 m/s. The speed of sound is also slightly sensitive (to second order) to the sound amplitude, resulting in nonlinear propagation effects, such as the weak production of harmonics and the mixing of tones (see parametric array). Sound pressure Sound pressure is the pressure deviation from the local ambient pressure caused by a sound wave. Sound pressure can be measured using a microphone in air and a hydrophone in water. The SI unit for sound pressure is the pascal (symbol: Pa). The instantaneous sound pressure is the deviation from the local ambient pressure caused by a sound wave at a given location and given instant in time. The effective sound pressure is the root mean square of the instantaneous sound pressure averaged over a given interval of time. In a soundwave, the complementary variable to sound pressure is the acoustic particle velocity. For small amplitudes, sound pressure and particle velocity are linearly related and their ratio is the acoustic impedance. The acoustic impedance depends on both the characteristics of the wave and the medium. The local instantaneous sound intensity is the product of the sound pressure and the acoustic particle velocity and is, therefore, a vector quantity in time.

Sound pressure level As the human ear can detect sounds with a very wide range of amplitudes, sound pressure is often measured as a level on a logarithmic decibel scale. The sound pressure level (SPL) or Lp is defined as

where p is the root-mean-square sound pressure and p0 is a reference pressure. (When using sound pressure levels, it may be important to the reference sound pressure used.) Commonly used reference pressures, defined in the standard ANSI S1.1-1994, are 20 Pa in air Pa in water.

sound quote sound and 1

Since the human ear does not have a flat spectral response, sound pressure levels are often frequency weighted so that the measured level will match perceived levels more closely. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has defined several weighting schemes. A-weighting attempts to match the response of the human ear to noise and A-weighted sound pressure levels are labeled dBA. C-weighting is used to measure peak levels. Examples of sound pressure and sound pressure levels Source of sound sound pressure pascal 100 sound pressure level dB re 20 Pa 134

threshold of pain hearing damage during short-term 20 approx. 120 effect jet, 100 m distant 6 - 200 110 - 140 jack hammer, 1 m distant / discotheque 2 approx. 100 hearing damage during long-term 0.6 approx. 90 effect major road, 10 m distant 0.2 - 0.6 80 - 90 passenger car, 10 m distant 0.02 - 0.2 60 - 80 TV set at home level, 1 m distant 0.02 ca. 60 normal talking, 1 m distant 0.002 - 0.02 40 - 60 very calm room 0.0002 - 0.0006 20 - 30

leaves noise, calm breathing auditory threshold at 2 kHz

0.00006 0.00002

10 0

Sound Waves Sound is a series of compression waves that moves through air or other materials. These sound waves are created by the vibration of some object, like a radio loudspeaker. The waves are detected when they cause a detector to vibrate. Your eardrum vibrates from sound waves to allow you to sense them. Sound has the standard characteristics of any waveform. Sound is waveform in matter Sound is a waveform that travels through matter. Although it is commonly associated in air, sound will readily travel through many materials such as water and steel. Some insulating materials absorb much of the sound waves, preventing the waves from penetrating the material. Does not travel in vacuum Because sound is the vibration of matter, it does not travel through a vacuum or in outer space. When you see movies or TV shows about battles in outer space, you should only be able to see an explosion but not hear it. The sounds are added for dramatic effect. Some atoms in space Note that in outer space, there are actually some widely-spaced atoms and molecules floating around. But since they are so far apart, regular wave motion would not be great enough to detect. Sound waves different than light waves Also note that light and radio waves are electromagnetic waves. They are completely different than sound, which is vibration of matter. Electromagnetic waves are related to electrical and magnetic fields and readily travel through space. Sound is a compression wave The back-and-forth vibration of an object creates the compression waves of sound. The motions of a loudspeaker cone, drumhead and guitar string are good examples of vibration that cause compression waves. This is

different than the up and down or transverse motion of a water wave. (See General Wave Motion for more information.)

Transverse Wave (water wave)

Compression Wave (sound) The illustration above shows a comparison of a transverse wave such as a water wave and the compression wave sound wave. Characteristics of sound A sound wave has characteristics just like any other type of wave, including amplitude, velocity, wavelength and frequency. Amplitude The amplitude of a sound wave is the same thing as its loudness. Since sound is a compression wave, its loudness or amplitude would correspond to how much the wave is compressed. It is sometimes called pressure amplitude. Decibel A common measurement of loudness is the decibel (dB). It is really 1/10 of a bel, which was named after the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. It is a complex unit that varies as the ratio of the logarithms of loudness.

Decrease in loudness A sound wave will spread out after it leaves its source, decreasing its amplitude or loudness. The amplitude decreases as the square of the distance from the source. Also, if there is some absorption in the material, the loudness of the sound will decrease as it moves through the substance. Speed or velocity of sound The speed or velocity of sound in air is approximately 344 meters/second, 1130 feet/sec. or 770 miles per hour at room temperature of 20oC (70oF). The speed varies with the temperature of air, such that sound travels slower at higher altitudes or on cold days. Note: The difference between speed and velocity is that velocity usually includes direction the of travel. We'll interchange them here, but in some cases the distinction is important. A jet plane traveling at the speed of sound would be moving at about 680 mph at sea level. At very high altitudes, the speed required would be much lower. Wavelength Wavelength is the distance from one crest to another of a wave. Since sound is a compression wave, the wavelength is the distance between maximum compressions. Frequency The frequency of sound is the rate at which the waves pass a given point. It is also the rate at which a guitar string or a loud speaker vibrates. Frequency is also called the pitch of a sound. It is called the note in musical sounds. Relationship The relationship between velocity, wavelength and frequency is: velocity = wavelength x frequency Since the velocity of sound is approximately the same for all wavelengths, frequency is often used to better describe the effects of the different wavelengths.

Pitch The pitch or note of a sound that we experience is determined by its wavelength or its frequency. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency becomes, and the higher the pitch that we hear. Creating and detecting sounds Creating and detecting sounds are similar effects, but opposite. They demonstrate the duality of nature. Creating sound Whenever an object in air vibrates, it causes compression waves in the air. These waves move away from the object as sound. There are many forms of the vibration, some not so obvious. The back and forth movement of a loudspeaker cone, guitar string or drum head result in compression waves of sound. When you speak, your vocal cords also vibrate, creating sound. Blowing across a bottle top can also create sound. In this case, the air inside the bottle goes in a circular motion, resulting in sound waves being formed. Wind blowing through trees can also create sound this indirect way. Sound can also be created by vibrating an object in a liquid such as water or in a solid such as iron. A train rolling on a steel railroad track will create a sound wave that travels through the tracks. They will then vibrate, creating sound in air that you can hear, while the train may be a great distance away. Detecting sound When a sound wave strikes an object, it can cause the object to vibrate. This leads to the method to detect sound, which requires changing that vibration into some other type of signal--usually electrical. The main way you detect or sense sounds is through your ears. The sound waves vibrate your ear drum, which goes to the inner ear and is changed to nerve signals you can sense. You can also feel sounds. Stand in front of a stereo or hi-fi loudspeaker on at full volume, and you can feel some of the vibrations from the music. There are mechanical devices that detect sounds, such as the microphone. The sound vibrates a membrane, which creates an electric signal that is amplified and recorded. Doppler effect

The Doppler effect, named after Christian Doppler, is the change in frequency and wavelength of a wave that is perceived by an observer moving relative to the source of the waves. For waves, such as sound waves, that propagate in a wave medium, the velocity of the observer and of the source are reckoned relative to the medium in which the waves are transmitted. The total Doppler effect may therefore result from either motion of the source or motion of the observer. Each of these effects is analyzed separately. For waves which do not require a medium, such as light or gravity in special relativity only the relative difference in velocity between the observer and the source needs to be considered.

Development Doppler first proposed to the effect 1842 in the monograph ber das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einige andere Gestirne des Himmels Versuch einer das Bradleysche Theorem als integrirenden Theil in sich schliessenden allgemeineren Theorie (On the coloured light of the binary refracted stars and other celestial bodies - Attempt of a more general theory including Bradley's theorem as an integral part) [1]. The hypothesis was tested for sound waves by the Dutch scientist Christoph Hendrik Diederik Buys Ballot in 1845. He confirmed that the sound's pitch was higher as the sound source approached him, and lower as the sound source receded from him. Hippolyte Fizeau discovered independently the same phenomenon on electromagnetic waves in 1848 (in France, the effect is sometimes called "effet Doppler-Fizeau"). It is often overlooked that in Doppler's publications (and also Einstein's in his discussion of the Doppler effect) he explicitly acknowledges that his formulas are only approximate since he made several mathematical approximations in his derivation. Doppler's derivation is repeated more or less verbatim in most modern textbooks but often without the warning that the formulas are only valid in some (experimentally often seen) limits. General For waves that travel through a medium (sound, ultrasound, etc...) the relationship between observed frequency f' and emitted frequency f is given by:

where is the speed of waves in the medium (in air at T degrees Celsius, this is 332 + 0.59T m/s) is the velocity of the source (the thing emitting the sound)

For waves that travel at the speed of light, such as radio waves, the relationship between observed frequency f' and emitted frequency f is given by: Change frequency in Observed frequency

where is the transmitted frequency is the velocity of the transmitter relative to the receiver in meters/second: positive when moving towards one another, negative when moving away is the speed of light in a vacuum is the wavelength of the light m/s

Because the detected frequency increases for objects moving toward the observer, the object's velocity must be subtracted when motion is moving toward the observer. (This is because the source's velocity is in the denominator.) Conversely, detected frequency decreases when the object moves away, and so the object's velocity is added when the motion is away. As mentioned previously this equation is only a first approximation to an exact formula, but works reasonably well in the case considered by Doppler, i.e. when the source and/or receiver moves slowly and the signal or wave moves rapidly, as well as simultaneously also being the case that the source and receiver are far apart from each other. When any of these approximations that Doppler made are violated the formulas discussed here are no longer valid except as a very rough approximation to the exact formulas. Analysis It is important to realize that the frequency of the sounds that the source emits does not actually change. To understand what happens, consider the following analogy. Someone throws one ball every second in a man's direction. Assume that balls travel with constant velocity. If the thrower is stationary, the man will receive one ball every second. However, if the thrower is moving towards the man, he will receive balls more frequently because the balls will be less spaced out. The converse is true if the thrower is moving away from the man. So it is actually the wavelength which is affected; as a consequence, the perceived frequency is also affected. If the moving source is emitting waves through a medium with an actual frequency f0, then an observer stationary relative to the medium detects waves with a frequency f given by:

which

can

be

written

as:

where v is the speed of the waves in the medium and vs, r is the speed of the source with respect to the medium (positive if moving away from the observer, negative if moving towards the observer), radial to the observer. With a relatively slow moving source, vs, r is small in comparison to v and the equation approximates to:

A similar analysis for a moving observer and a stationary source yields the observed frequency (the observer's velocity being represented as vo):

where the same convention applies : vo is positive if the observer is moving away from the source, and negative if the observer is moving towards the source. These can be generalized into a single equation with both the source and receiver moving. However the limitations mentioned above still apply. When the more complicated exact equation is derived without using any approximations (just assuming that everything: source, receiver, and wave or signal are moving linearly) several interesting and perhaps surprising results are found. For example, as Lord Rayleigh noted in his classic book on sound2 by properly moving it is possible to hear a symphony being played backwards. This is the so-called "time reversal effect" of the Doppler effect. Other interesting cases are that the Doppler effect is time dependent in general (thus we need to know not only the source and receivers' velocities but also their positions at a given time) and also in some circumstances it is possible to receive two signals or waves from a source (or no signal at all). In addition there are more possibilities than just the receiver approaching the signal and the receiver receding from the signal. All these additional complications are for the classical i.e. nonrelativistic Doppler effect. However all these results also hold for the relativistic Doppler effect as well. The first attempt to extend Doppler's analysis to light waves was soon made by Fizeau. In fact, light waves do not require a medium to propagate

and the correct understanding of the Doppler effect for light requires the use of the Special Theory of Relativity. See relativistic Doppler effect. Applications

A stationary microphone records moving police sirens at different pitches depending on their relative direction.

Everyday The siren on a passing emergency vehicle will start out higher than its stationary pitch, slide down as it passes, and continue lower than its stationary pitch as it recedes from the observer. Astronomer John Dobson explained the effect thus: "The reason the siren slides is because it doesn't hit you." In other words, if the siren approached the observer directly, the pitch would remain constant (as vs, r is only the radial component) until the vehicle hit him, and then immediately jump to a new lower pitch. Because the vehicle passes by the observer, the radial velocity does not remain constant, but instead varies as a function of the angle between his line of sight and the siren's velocity:

where vs is the velocity of the object (source of waves) with respect to the medium, and is the angle between the object's forward velocity and the line of sight from the object to the observer. Astronomy

Redshift of spectral lines in the optical spectrum of a supercluster of distant galaxies (right), as compared to that of the Sun (left). The Doppler effect for electromagnetic waves such as light, is of great use in astronomy, and results in either a so-called redshift or blueshift. It has been used to measure the speed at which stars and galaxies are approaching toward or receding from us, that is, the radial velocity. This is used to detect if a single star is, in fact, a close binary and even to measure the speed of rotation of stars and galaxies. The use of the Doppler effect for light in astronomy depends on the fact that the spectra of stars are not continuous. They show absorption lines at well defined frequencies that are correlated with the energies required to excite electrons in various elements from one level to another. The Doppler effect is recognizable in the fact that the absorption lines are not always at the frequencies that are obtained from the spectrum of a stationary light source. Since blue light has a higher frequency than red light, the spectral lines from an approaching astronomical light source show a blueshift and those of receding sources show a redshift. Among the nearby stars, the largest radial velocities with respect to the Sun are +308 km/s (BD-154041, also known as LHS 52, 81.7 light-years away) and -260 km/s (Woolley 9722, also known as Wolf 1106 and LHS 64, 78.2 light-years away). Positive radial velocity means the star is receding from the Sun, negative that it is approaching. Temperature measurement

Another use of the Doppler effect which is found mostly in astronomy, is the estimation of the temperature of a gas which is emitting a spectral line. Due to the thermal motion of the gas, each emitter can be slightly red or blue shifted, and the net effect is a broadening of the line. This line shape is called a Doppler profile and the width of the line is proportional to the square root of the temperature of the gas, allowing the Doppler-broadened line to be used to measure the temperature of the emitting gas. Radar The Doppler effect is also used in some forms of radar to measure the velocity of detected objects. A radar beam is fired at a moving target - a car, for example, as radar is often used by police to detect speeding motorists as it recedes from the radar source. Each successive wave has to travel further to reach the car, before being reflected and re-detected near the source. As each wave has to move further, the gap between each wave increases, increasing the wavelength. In some situations, the radar beam is fired at the moving car as it approaches, in which case each successive wave travels a lesser distance, decreasing the wavelength. In either situation, calculations from the Doppler effect accurately determine the car's velocity. The Proximity fuze which was developed during World War II also relies on Doppler radar. Medical imaging and blood flow measurement An echocardiogram can, within certain limits, produce accurate assessment of the direction of blood flow and the velocity of blood and cardiac tissue at any arbitrary point using the doppler effect. One of the limitations is that the ultrasound beam should be as parallel to the blood flow as possible. Velocity measurements allow assessment of cardiac valve areas and function, any abnormal communications between the left and right side of the heart, any leaking of blood through the valves (valvular regurgitation), and calculation of the cardiac output. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound using gas-filled microbubble contrast media can be used to improve velocity or other flow-related medical measurements. Although "Doppler" has become synonymous with "velocity measurement" in medical imaging, in many cases it is not the frequency shift (Doppler shift) of the received signal that is measured, but the phase shift (when the received signal arrives). Velocity measurements of blood flow are also used in other fields of medical ultrasonography, such as obstetric ultrasonography and neurology. Velocity measurement of blood flow in arteries and veins based on doppler effect is an effective tool for diagnosis of vascular problems like stenosis [2]. Flow measurement

Instruments such as the laser Doppler velocimeter (LDV), and Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) have been developed to measure velocities in a fluid flow. The LDV and ADV emit a light or acoustic beam, and measure the doppler shift in wavelengths of reflections from particles moving with the flow. This technique allows non-intrusive flow measurements, at high precision and high frequency.