The process that involves generation of sounds, their travels and interactions within the environment, physiological processing, neural processing and physiological/cognitive processing.
Hearing
Study of the physical properties of sounds in the environment, how they travel through air, and how they are affected by objects in their environment.
Acoustics
Study of how we perceive sound
Psychoacoustics
Series of disturbances of molecules within an elastic medium such as air.
Sound
Property of a material that returns it to its original shape after it has been deformed by an external force.
Elasticity
What does Brownian motion state?
Molecules of air are not stationary, but due to their thermal energy are constantly moving around in random patterns at extremely hig speeds.
What does Boyle’s Law state?
There is an inverse relationship between air volume and air pressure. If one increases, the other decreases.
Pushes air molecules to approach and collide, more molecules in a given volume causes air pressure to increase. Due to high pressure and elasticity of air, molecules begin to return to equilibrium positions.
Compression
Due to inertia and momentum, air molecules overshoot their equilibrium marks, which causes air molecules to be more spread out, results in low pressure.
Rarefaction
What is Hooke’s Law?
Restoring force is proportional to the distance of displacement and acts in opposite direction.
Individual molecules move up and down at right angles to the direction that the wave is traveling, radiates in all directions.
Ex: think of wave motion of water
Transverse waves
Individual molecules move parallel to the direction that the wave is traveling, radiates in all directions. Sound wave.
Ex: slinky
Longitudinal Waves
When the pattern of a simple sound wave can be graphed out as a sin wave.
Simple harmonic motion
What is one cycle of vibration?
Molecules move from baseline to maximal displacement (compression), back to baseline, to position of maximal displacement in the opposite direction (rarefaction), return to baseline.
What is a graph with time on the horizontal axis and amplitude on the vertical axis?
Waveform
What is frequency?
Number of cycles per second, measured in Hertz.
What is a period?
Time it takes for 1 cycle of vibration to occur (t).
Equations for the reciprocal relationship between hertz (Hz) and period (t)?
F=1/t
t=1/F
What is the distance traveled by 1 cycle of a sound wave called?
Wavelength
What is velocity?
How fast a sound moves over a distance, depends on density and elastic properties of a medium which it is moving. 330 m/s at 0 degrees C.
Equation/relationship between velocity, wavelength, and frequency?
F= v/ wavelength
Wavelength= v/F
Refers to the position of the waveform relative to a reference point in time. Often described in terms of degrees.
Phase
What is amplitude?
Degree of change in pressure due to a molecular displacement over time, measured in pascals.
True or false? Peak amplitude is measured as the amount of pressure change above or below ambient pressure?
True