A train, standing in a station-yard, blows a whistle of frequency 1200 Hz in still air. The wind starts blowing in the direction from the yard to the station with a speed of 30 m/s. What are the frequency, wavelength, and speed of sound for an observer standing on the station’s platform? Is the situation exactly identical to the case when the air is still and the observer runs towards the yard at a speed of 30 m/s? The speed of sound in still air can be taken as 1020 m/s.
Properties of sound
A sound wave is a mechanical wave (or mechanical vibration) that transit through media such as gas (air), liquid (water), and solid (wood).
Quality Of Sound
A sound or a sound wave is defined as the energy produced due to the vibrations of particles in a medium. When any medium produces a disturbance or vibrations, it causes a movement in the air particles which produces sound waves. Molecules in the air vibrate about a certain average position and create compressions and rarefactions. This is called pitch which is defined as the frequency of sound. The frequency is defined as the number of oscillations in pressure per second.
Categories of Sound Wave
People perceive sound in different ways, like a medico student takes sound as vibration produced by objects reaching the human eardrum. A physicist perceives sound as vibration produced by an object, which produces disturbances in nearby air molecules that travel further. Both of them describe it as vibration generated by an object, the difference is one talks about how it is received and other deals with how it travels and propagates across various mediums.
A train, standing in a station-yard, blows a whistle of frequency 1200 Hz in still air. The wind starts blowing in the direction from the yard to the station with a speed of 30 m/s. What are the frequency, wavelength, and speed of sound for an observer standing on the station’s platform? Is the situation exactly identical to the case when the air is still and the observer runs towards the yard at a speed of 30 m/s? The speed of sound in still air can be taken as 1020 m/s.
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