Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. Applications of acoustics are for instance the audio and noise control industries.

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possible causes of plastic cases cracking sounds [closed]

I have a very strange issue with many plastic cases in my room (tv, computer etc.) which very often make cracking sounds as if when cooling down after switching off - the problem is they crack all the ...
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44 views

Is a sonic boom a one-time bang or a continuous noise?

Is a sonic boom a one-time bang, caused when an object initially goes supersonic, or is it a continuous noise emitted by the object as it's travelling? To be more specific, will an aircraft which is ...
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34 views

Relationship between tones made by a piano

If a piano were to be tuned perfectly with the equal temperament system, what would be the relationship between standing waves from one note to the next? How would the frequency and wavelength of ...
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49 views

Energy in a wind instrument?

My physics teacher said that he saw a guy playing a very large wind instrument on TV, and the guy apparently calculated that the total energy present in the instrument when he was playing was almost ...
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1answer
26 views

Decibel equation, dyne or Watt

I know decibel is used as a ration between two same physical quantity on a logaritmic scale. Is also used for calculate the intensity of a sound, but I found it reported in two different ways db = 20 ...
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50 views

Ringing sound when you flip a coin?

When you flip a coin, you hear a ringing sound. I know that the source of the sound is the thumbnail hitting the coin, but it seems to be filtered by the spinning of the coin. Specifically, the faster ...
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Thermal Penetration Depth discrepancy

I've been working on a project that involves thermoacoustics, and one of the commonly-used values in this field is know as the thermal penetration depth. It is calculated as follows: $$\delta_k = ...
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1answer
47 views

Why do higher pitches appear to be louder?

It may just be in a few cases, but in the case of a flute, a higher pitch appears to come with a perceived higher volume. Is this simply because you need to put more energy into the flute to get a ...
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1answer
39 views

High frequency sound transmission through plastic. I can't hear enough treble! [closed]

I have a large cylinder made of a rigid thick plastic with a speaker inside of it. I want to be able to hear high pitched / high frequency noise from the outside but I'm primarily hearing bass. The ...
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25 views

How to amplify a sound as much as possible acoustically? [closed]

It is possible to amplify a sound from a musical instrument by making sure that the vibrations that are created travel through a so-called 'sound box'; The body of a guitar is a sound box that ...
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29 views

Echo of a sound whose source is moving away from the wall [closed]

A girl walks. She is $50m$ in front of the wall and she begins to sing. Find when she will hear the sound echo if she recedes from the wall at $2m/s$. The temperature is $12^0 C$. I don't know where ...
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20 views

Bass and Treble-Car Steroes

In a car which phenomenon, diffraction or the resonant frequency of the car, lends itself more to the ability of bass to go farther? Related Answer: Why do bass tones travel through walls?
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1answer
13 views

Varying the amplitude of a driven wave

I' d like to know whether varying the amplitude of a system at resonance is possible or not and if it is, how? I've calculated the resonance frequency of a material and I'd like to know the ...
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1answer
45 views

A Doppler Effect problem with a moving medium

I tried solving the following question and started having multiple doubts: Two cars A and B are moving towards each other with some speed $25$ m/s. Wind is blowing with speed $5$ m/s in the ...
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1answer
46 views

Hearing sound around corners

I've been taught that diffraction is the reason why we can hear around corners, since the wavelength of sound is approximately 10 cm (smaller than a door or a window). I wonder how can this be ...
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7answers
2k views

A Musical Pathway

Using a small number of sound emitters, could you create a room where certain nodes emitted particular tones, but no meaningful sound was heard anywhere else. So, for example, by walking down a ...
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1answer
247 views

Why is light produced when an underwater bubble is collapsed with a sound wave?

Why is light produced when an underwater bubble is collapsed with a sound wave? I have come across this fact on a page (similar to this) but can't understand "Why". I'm just curious about this ...
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1answer
53 views

Can random constructive interference with sound waves cause damage?

Any two sound waves have a random chance to constructively interfere with each other at a given spot and this will cause an increase or decrease in pressure. So is it possible that a large number of ...
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3answers
95 views

Why does sound move faster in solids?

I know that the molecules are closer together in solids, and I know thicker springs also respond carry waves faster than thinner springs, but for some reasons I can't understand why. The molecules ...
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1answer
64 views

Can we apply de Broglie's relations to sound waves?

Can we apply the de Broglie relations to a sound waves ? Is it possible? if yes how do you do that? what would be the mass(m) in the equation?
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1answer
59 views

Manufacturing Fresnel Lenses with Sound

I understand fresnel lenses are manufactured using CNC machines. I was wondering, if it would be possible to use sound to vibrate liquid silicon and then fast cool it into the standard form of a ...
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2answers
140 views

What are the limitations of performing music in space?

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's song Space Oddity is making news around the world today. It makes me wonder: What are the limitations of performing music in space? Clearly, there is no point to ...
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1answer
52 views

Crackling of Speakers-Audio

Why do speakers make crackling noises when the pitches get too high for them? And why is it that lower end speakers tend to crackle more? If you try to feed in too high of a frequency, I would imagine ...
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1answer
115 views

Why do sound waves travel at the same speed moleculewise? (Same medium)

I don't understand what happens in reality (outside of wave theories). If I clap my hands I invest energy in the nearby air molecules, which move and transfer their energy to nearby molecules which ...
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73 views

Slinky reverb: the origin of the iconic Star Wars blaster sound

This is a fun problem that I came across recently, which I'm posting here for your delectation. We all love a good slinky: they can be used for all sorts of fun demos in physics. One example is the ...
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3answers
83 views

Lethality of sounds and extreme “loudness”

In theory, could pure sound be lethal? How loud would it have to be? Also, which events are the loudest in the universe, and how loud are they? I'm confining attention to events which occur regularly, ...
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36 views

Is there a naturally occuring sound pressure level reference?

There are lots of devices that purport to measure the absolute value of sound pressure levels. Here is an example, here's another, there's also this iPhone App. Putting such devices side-by-side in ...
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3answers
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Polarization of sound

The sound can't be polarized beacuse the vibration of such type can't be polarized beacuse the vibration of such type can't be limited or controlled by any barriers and so polarization is not possible ...
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43 views

Rolling sound of thunder

When sound of thunder travels to the listener from its location,different parts of the same wave have to travel through air of different moisture levels,densities and molar masses. This is what I ...
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2answers
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Increase sound intensity in a wall [closed]

Why it seems that a sound transmitted in a wall is more intense (amplified)?
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1answer
59 views

Why do cold metal plate make less noise?

I have a metal gate in my home so I have noticed that when it is a hot day and if I hit it it makes a lot of noise but when there is a rainy day and the weather and the gate re cold and if I hit the ...
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2answers
86 views

In terms of the Doppler effect, what happens when the source is moving faster than the wave?

I'm just trying to understand this problem from a qualitative perspective. The Doppler effect is commonly explained in terms of how a siren sounds higher in pitch as it is approaching a particular ...
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1answer
53 views

How to determine frequency components present in distorted signal, with the set of possible components already known?

I am trying to choose the best approach to digitally analyse a signal, which is a mix of an unknown number (but less than 16) fundamental signals at specific frequencies (e.g., sines). The goal is ...
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117 views

Waveguides (in the ocean?)

The speed of sound in the ocean is given by $$c_s(\theta,z) = 1450 + 4.6\theta - 0.055\theta^2 + 0.016z$$ $\theta$ is the temperature in degrees celcius, and $z$ is the depth. In a simplified model, ...
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4answers
85 views

Would a phone move upon vibration in a completely uniform situation?

I was sitting down yesterday and saw my phone vibrate on a side, and it moved about a centimetre per vibration. I wondered why it moves, and thought perhaps that the side it was on had a slight ...
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Accelerating faster per second than the speed of sound?

What would happen if you were to accelerate one end of a material, say a steel rod for instance, at faster per second than the speed of sound in that material? For example, if the speed of sound in ...
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1answer
124 views

How does one find the wave velocity and the phase speed?

While I was studying beats, I tried to find a displacement function of any particle in the most generalized form. I ended up with $$y=2A\sin(\pi(t-x/v)(f_1+f_2))\cos(\pi(t-x/v)(f_1-f_2)).$$ Now, ...
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235 views

Maximum delay for effective active noise cancelling?

Active noise cancelling reduces unwanted sound by sending the inverted phase of the original phase: (Source: Wikipedia) Theoretically, this seems logical to me. However, in real life, the ...
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1answer
99 views

Whistling on bottle tops

It is well known that if you blow horizontally on a bottle top it creates a sound. Pouring water to the bottle changes the pitch. I have been doing experiments on the relation between the sound's ...
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3answers
219 views

Frequency of a Tuning Fork

Question: Which of the following affect the frequency of a tuning fork? Tine stiffness Tine length The force with which it's struck Density of the surrounding air Temperature of the surrounding air ...
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2answers
80 views

Independence of frequency in sound waves?

Why does the frequency of sound wave depend only on the source? Why is the frequency and not any other "quality" independent of everything but the source? And that said, why is velocity and ...
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36 views

Focused 200 K sound [closed]

How can a 200K sounds wave be focused? I am trying to make an acoustical spotlight. The 200K sound wave will be amplitude modulated. Any help that you can provide will be greatly appreciated. ...
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3answers
144 views

Water excitation with sine waves

I saw that video when they connected a water hose to a speaker emitting 24 hz sine wave, and its illusion on the shape of the follow going out of the hose (because the video capture rate is fixed at ...
3
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1answer
99 views

Why do we hear a higher pitched sound out of water when we hit two stones against each other in the water?

The observer is outside the water; the stones are underwater (say, 1 m below surface, if that matters). This produces a higher pitched sound for the observer than when both the observer and the stones ...
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1answer
164 views

Acoustic Metamaterials: Negative Bulk Modulus?

In acoustic metamaterials we have simultaneously negative bulk modulus, $\beta$, and effective mass density, $\rho$. I understand how one can obtain a -ve $\rho$ by constructing a solid-solid system ...
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2answers
79 views

Sound as a conserved quantity

From the first man to the present day men, all of them have made some sound. Sound is an energy, it can neither be created nor can it be destroyed. Therefore, every word spoken by each human that came ...
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2answers
107 views

Calculating the mass equivalency of a song?

I've recently become fascinated with the idea of sound energy having a theoretical equivalent mass. I've read over this thread: Do light and sound waves have mass I understand this part: ...
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2answers
241 views

Can light waves cause beats?

My question is pretty brief. When two sound waves of nearly same frequencies interfere, we get beats. But, I have not observed something like that happening in the case of light. In fact, most of the ...
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56 views

Why it happen's when I rub my finger's?

I have a pc with a metallic body on my CPU case. Yesterday suddenly the earthing wire of my CPU broke down and I was able to feel a little bit current on touching it's metallic body. But what I found ...
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1answer
62 views

Sound of packing tape dispensation?

I am sitting in a cigar lounge, and under the jazz music playing I can hear this strange, rising and falling tone, that sounds similar to one of those weird tubes you can find at a fun fair. You tilt ...

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