Name: Study of Infrasound and Ultrasound in Waves
Uploaded: 2019-07-19
Duration: 5 min 55 s
Description: If you pay attention, you will be able to hear so many different sounds in your daily life. What about the sounds that the human ear is not capable of detect...

Question

Explain with an example, the propagation of sound in a medium.

Accepted Answer

Sound is created when something vibrates and sends waves of energy (vibration) into our ears.

Experiment to show the propagation of sound:

(1)Take a vertical metal strip with its lower end fixed and upper end being free to vibrate as shown in (a).

(2) pluck the strip so that it starts vibrating. As the strip is moved to the right to as shown in (B), the air in that layer is compressed and the space of high density(compression) is formed at (C). The particles of this layer compress the layer next to it, which then compresses the next layer and thus the zone of compression is transferred to the subsequent layers of the medium without the particles themselves being displaced from their mean positions.

(3) As the metal strip returns from $b to a$ as shown in Fig(C) after pushing the particles in front, the compression $C$ moves forward and particles of air near the strip return to their normal positions.

(4) When the strip moves from $a to c$ as shown in Fig (D), it pushes back the layer of air near it towards the left and thus produces a low-pressure space on its right side (R). This region is called rarefaction.

(5) When the strip returns from C to its mean position A in Fig (e), the rarefaction R travels forward and air near the strip return to their normal positions.

In this way, the successive zones of compression and rarefaction move forward in the form of a longitudinal wave.

Explain with an example, the propagation of sound in a medium.

Important Questions on Propagation of Sound Waves

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