You are driving along a highway at 32 m/s when you hear the siren of an emergency vehicle traveling in the opposite direction on the other side of the highway. When the vehicle is approaching you, you hear the frequency of the siren as 2300 Hz, but when it is past you the frequency becomes 1600 Hz. What is the speed of the vehicle? The speed of sound in air is 343 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.
You are driving along a highway at 32 m/s when you hear the siren of an emergency vehicle traveling in the opposite direction on the other side of the highway. When the vehicle is approaching you, you hear the frequency of the siren as 2300 Hz, but when it is past you the frequency becomes 1600 Hz. What is the speed of the vehicle? The speed of sound in air is 343 m/s.
Step by step
Solved in 4 steps with 27 images
