Waves and Sound Physics Recently a company built a factory near your home. One windy day while walking past the factory you notice a very low pitch sound resonating from the smokestack attached to the factory. You conclude that the sound is the result of air column resonance resembling an air column open at one end (the top of the chimney) and closed at the other end (the bottom of the chimney where the furnace is located). Checking with the weather app on your phone you determine the air temperature to be 15 °C. You also recall reading in your local newspaper that the height of the smokestack is 12 m. Doing some quick mental calculations you determine the resonant sound to be the result of the 3rd overtone standing wave pattern within the air column. 1. What pitch of sound are you hearing as you walk past the factory? 2. Which harmonic does the pitch represent? Given information: the speed of sound in air based on the air temperature provided is 340m/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.
Waves and Sound Physics
Recently a company built a factory near your home. One windy day while walking past the factory you notice a very low pitch sound resonating from the smokestack attached to the factory. You conclude that the sound is the result of air column resonance resembling an air column open at one end (the top of the chimney) and closed at the other end (the bottom of the chimney where the furnace is located). Checking with the weather app on your phone you determine the air temperature to be 15 °C. You also recall reading in your local newspaper that the height of the smokestack is 12 m. Doing some quick mental calculations you determine the resonant sound to be the result of the 3rd overtone standing wave pattern within the air column.
1. What pitch of sound are you hearing as you walk past the factory?
2. Which harmonic does the pitch represent?
Given information: the speed of sound in air based on the air temperature provided is 340m/s.
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