The crest of a Parasaurolophus dinosaur skull is shaped somewhat like a trombone and contains a nasal passage in the form of a long, bent tube open at both ends. The dinosaur may have used the passage to produce sound by setting up the fundamental mode in it. (a) If the nasal passage in a certain Parasaurolophus fossil is 2.0 m long, what frequency would have been produced? (b) If that dinosaur could be recreated (as in Jurassic Park), would a person with a hearing range of 60 Hz to 20 kHz be able to hear that fundamental mode and, if so, would the sound be high or low frequency? Fossil skulls that contain shorter nasal passages are thought to be those of the female Parasaurolophus. (c) Would that make the female’s fundamental frequency higher or lower than the male’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.
The crest of a Parasaurolophus dinosaur skull is shaped
somewhat like a trombone and contains a nasal passage in the
form of a long, bent tube open at both ends. The dinosaur may
have used the passage to produce sound by setting up the fundamental
mode in it. (a) If the nasal passage in a certain
Parasaurolophus fossil is 2.0 m long, what frequency would have
been produced? (b) If that dinosaur could be recreated (as in
Jurassic Park), would a person with a hearing range of 60 Hz to
20 kHz be able to hear that fundamental mode and, if so, would the
sound be high or low frequency? Fossil skulls that contain shorter
nasal passages are thought to be those of the female
Parasaurolophus. (c) Would that make the female’s fundamental
frequency higher or lower than the male’s?
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