Properties of sound

 Properties of sound

Sound: The disturbance produced by the particles of matter about their mean position is called sound. sound is a mechanical property of matter which means that the WAVES of sound need a medium for their propagation. Without any medium sound does not propagate, which means that sound can not travel in a vacuum.

Production of sound: As you know sound is produced by the disturbance of particles of matter about their mean position, so without the disturbance sound can not be generated. So for the production of sound you must produce disturbance in the particles.

Transmission of sound: Sound is a longitudinal mechanical wave which means that the particles and the wave propagation are parallel to each other or in other words wave propagation and the particles have o⁰ angle.

Detection of sound: Sound can be detected by various objects means ear is the one such biological organ. The ear converts the sound wave to the hearing sense. There are different instruments are used to convert the sound wave to the hearing sense. Such mobile phones have a receiver that converts the electromagnetic wave to hearing sounds.

There are different characteristics of sound which are given below one by one:

Pitch: The characteristics by which we can distinguish two sounds of the same instrument but different frequencies. Pitch is the subjective property of an object while frequency is the objective property of the object. Pitch depends upon the frequency of an object which means that the higher the frequency higher the pitch and the lower the frequency, the lower the pitch that’s why women sounds are shrill and men's sounds are grave so which means that women have higher frequency so women have higher pitch and men have smaller frequency so men have smaller pitch.

Loudness: The greater the sound energy, the greater will be the loudness. With the help of loudness, we can easily determine which sound is louder. Loudness is explained by the amplitude which means that the more the amplitude, the more loudness. Loudness depends upon the following factors which are given below.

1)      The area of the vibrating body: When the area of the vibrating body increases the loudness of the object will increase.

2)      Distance from the source of the sound: Distance increases the loudness decreases and vice versa which means that distance and loudness are inversely proportional tpo each other.

3)      Material through which sound is traveling: Loudness is different in different materials which means that loudness depends upon the different material.

Quality: It is the property of an object by which we can distinguish the same loudness and same pitch.

With the help of this property of the sound, we can easily determine the sound e.g we can easily differentiate the sound of piano and flute.

Sound intensity: The intensity of the sound is the amount of energy passing through per unit area is called sound intensity. The unit of intensity Is watt and it is the large unit we used a small unit is picowatt. Intensity is an objective property of the sound which means that intensity is the same for all object.