How does sounds travel

How does sound travel? Try all of Tigtag's videos and learning resources today! View more Tigtag videos. How do sounds travel? Time: Share. The same thing happens with sound and light as well. Have you ever tried reflecting light off a mirror? In a similar way, you can also reflect vibration which is something we know as an echo. Echo is the energy that travels to the wall before it bounces back and to your ears.

One thing you have to remember is that these waves lose their energy. This is why you can only hear so far and on calm weather days. This is because the wind dissipates the energy. Its speed mostly depends on the ambient conditions and the density of the medium. The medium can be thin or thick which will then determines how fast the energy will travel through it. The frequency is the total number of vibrations produced by the source.

Sound waves that have long wavelengths are those we know as low-pitch. Those with short wavelengths are what we know as high-pitch. Every physical object causes vibrations when it moves in the air. This leads to creation of waves in the air that then continue to travel as a form of sound. This vibration happens in air, solid mediums and liquid. These vibrations can travel long distance which is what happens with trains on steel railroad. They have to travel a long distance in which case they often collide with other molecules.

Have you ever heard of someone saying that an airplane broke through the sound barrier? Do you know what that means? It means that the plane went so fast that it overtook these high-intensity waves it produces. The airplane then makes a sound called a sonic boom.

This is why its sound comes to you before you ever see a plane up in the sky. It all depends on the medium since it moves at different speed trough liquid, solid, and gas medium. Its speed depends on how dense is the medium. The noise travels through steel about 15 times faster than through air and about 4 times faster through water than through air.

Sound also travels differently through different gases. If the air is warm, it will travel much faster than in cold air. It also moves 3x faster in helium than in ordinary air. The properties of a sound wave change when it travels through different media: gas e. When a wave passes through a denser medium, it goes faster than it does through a less-dense medium.

This means that sound travels faster through water than through air, and faster through bone than through water. When molecules in a medium vibrate, they can move back and forth or up and down. Sound energy causes the molecules to move back and forth in the same direction that the sound is travelling.

This is known as a longitudinal wave. Transverse waves occur when the molecules vibrate up and down, perpendicular to the direction that the wave travels. Speaking as well as hearing involves vibrations. To speak, we move air past our vocal cords, which makes them vibrate. We change the sounds we make by stretching those vocal cords.

When the vocal cords are stretched we make high sounds and when they are loose we make lower sounds. This is known as the pitch of the sound. The sounds we hear every day are actually collections of simpler sounds.

A musical sound is called a tone. If we strike a tuning fork, it gives off a pure tone, which is the sound of a single frequency.

But if we were to sing or play a note on a trumpet or violin, the result is a combination of one main frequency with other tones. This gives each musical instrument its characteristic sound. Science World YouTube Sound. The brain interprets these vibrations as sounds. The whole process is pretty complex. You can learn more in How Hearing Works. So, sound needs a physical medium in order to travel anywhere. Is there enough physical material in space to act as a medium for sound waves? Find out in the next section.

The speed of a sound wave depends upon the medium through which it travels. In general, sound travels faster through solids than through liquids or gases. Also, the denser the medium, the slower sound will travel through it. The same sound will travel at a different speed on a cold day than it would on a warm day. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close.