SOUND WAVE

Sound Wave can propagate through compressible media

such as air, water and solids as longitudinal waves and
also as a transverse waves in solids. The sound waves are
generated by a sound source, such as the vibrating
diaphragm of a stereo speaker. The sound source creates
vibrations in the surrounding medium. As the source
continues to vibrate the medium, the vibrations
propagate away from the source at the speed of sound,
thus forming the sound wave. At a fixed distance from the
source, the pressure, velocity, and displacement of the
medium vary in time. At an instant in time, the pressure,
velocity, and displacement vary in space. Note that the
particles of the medium do not travel with the sound
wave. This is intuitively obvious for a solid, and the same
is true for liquids and gases (that is, the vibrations of
particles in the gas or liquid transport the vibrations,
while the average position of the particles over time does
not change). During propagation, waves can
be reflected, refracted, or attenuated by the medium.[4]
The behavior of sound propagation is generally affected
by three things:
A relationship between density and pressure. This
relationship, affected by temperature, determines the
speed of sound within the medium.
The propagation is also affected by the motion of the
medium itself. For example, sound moving through wind.
Independent of the motion of sound through the medium,
if the medium is moving, the sound is further transported.

The viscosity of the medium also affects the motion of

sound waves. It determines the rate at which sound is
attenuated. For many media, such as air or water,
attenuation due to viscosity is negligible.
When sound is moving through a medium that does not
have constant physical properties, it may be refracted
(either dispersed or focused).[4]The mechanical vibrations
that can be interpreted as sound are able to travel
through all forms of matter: gases, liquids, solids,
andplasmas. The matter that supports the sound is called
the medium. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum.
Sound wave properties and characteristics
Sound waves are often simplified to a description in terms
of sinusoidal plane waves, which are characterized by these
generic properties:
Frequency, or its inverse, the period
Wavelength
Wave number
Amplitude
Sound pressure
Sound intensity
Speed of sound
Direction

Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating

event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal
frequency, which emphasizes the contrast to spatial
frequency and angular frequency. The period is the duration
of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is
the reciprocal of the frequency. For example, if a newborn
baby's heart beats at a frequency of 120 times a minute,
its period the interval between beats is half a second
(60 seconds (i.e. a minute) divided by 120 beats).
Frequency is an important parameter used in science and
engineering to specify the rate
of oscillatory and vibratory phenomena, such as mechanical
vibrations,audio (sound) signals, radio waves, and light.
the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of
the wavethe distance over which the wave's shape
repeats.[1] It is usually determined by considering the
distance between consecutive corresponding points of
the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero
crossings and is a characteristic of both traveling waves
and standing waves, as well as other spatial wave patterns.
[2][3]
Wavelength is commonly designated by the Greek
letter lambda (). The concept can also be applied to
periodic waves of non-sinusoidal shape.[1][4] The
term wavelength is also sometimes applied
to modulated waves, and to the sinusoidal envelopes of
modulated waves or waves formed by interference of
several sinusoids.[5] The SI unit of wavelength is the meter.
the wavenumber (also wave number) is the spatial
frequency of a wave, either in cycles per unit distance or
radians per unit distance. It can be envisaged as the
number of waves that exist over a specified distance

(analogous to frequency being the number of cycles or

radians per unit time).
Because of the use of this term in applied physics,
including spectroscopy, often the reference distance
should be assumed to be cm. For example, a particle's
energy may be given as a wavenumber in cm1, which
strictly speaking is not a unit of energy. However if one
assumes this corresponds to electromagnetic radiation,
then it can be directly converted to any unit of energy,
e.g. 1 cm1 implies 1.23984104 eV and
8065.54 cm1 implies 1 eV.[1]
The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its
change over a single period (such as time or spatial period).
There are various definitions of amplitude (see below),
which are all functions of the magnitude of the difference
between the variable's extreme values. In older texts
the phase is sometimes called the amplitude.[1]
Sound pressure or acoustic pressure is the
local pressure deviation from the ambient (average, or
equilibrium) atmospheric pressure, caused by a sound wave.
In air, sound pressure can be measured using
a microphone, and in water with a hydrophone.
Sound intensity or acoustic intensity is defined as
the sound power per unit area. The usual context is the
noise measurement of soundintensity in the air at a
listener's location as a sound energy quantity.[1]
The speed of sound is the distance traveled per unit of
time by a sound wave propagating through
an elastic medium. In dry air at 20 C (68 F), the speed of
sound is 343 metres per second (1,125 ft/s). This is 1,235

kilometres per hour (667 kn; 767 mph), or about a

kilometer in three seconds or a mile in about five
seconds.
Direction is the information contained in the relative
position of one point with respect to another point
without the distance information. Directions may be
either relative to some indicated reference (the violins in a
full orchestra are typically seated to the left of the
conductor), or absolute according to some previously
agreed upon frame of reference (New York City lies due
west of Madrid). Direction is often indicated manually by
an extended index finger or written as an arrow. On a
vertically oriented sign representing a horizontal plane,
such as a road sign, "forward" is usually indicated by an
upward arrow. Mathematically, direction may be uniquely
specified by a unit vector, or equivalently by the angles
made by the most direct path with respect to a specified
set of axes.