It is a fact that without soundwaves, people will not be able to hear their surroundings and the world will simply become muted. Soundwaves are a gift that allow people to hear and they work in many interesting ways.
To begin, sound is produced from longitudinal waves pulsing similarly like a slinky. Longitudinal waves are mechanical waves that require a medium to travel through.
This means that for sound to be able to travel, it will require the help of air, water, and even steel. It also requires that the medium has any series of interconnected and interacting particles such as solid, liquid, and gas.
Soundwaves are technically a disturbance because they vibrate and travel by disturbing the next particles that follow along their path. The disturbance by which sound creates looks very similar to the ripple effect where an object is dropped into a body of still water.
As the wave travels across interconnected and interacting particles, it makes its way to human eardrums that work to funnel sound vibrations through different parts of the ear from canals, membranes, and bones. This is where soundwaves are turned into audible noise.
As humans are able to hear a variety of sounds on a continuous basis, some sounds are loud, and some are soft. Some are shrill while some are pleasant to the ears.
What makes these sounds different from each other is pitch, which is a term used to describe how high or low sound is. Without soundwaves, the world will appear just like space, which is a silent vacuum.
Soundwaves are measured with the Hz, which stands for Hertz.
Scientists study soundwaves by visualizing them on a machine called Cathode-Ray Oscilloscope that works to display soundwaves as transverse waves on a screen. This conversion makes it easier for scientists to determine soundwave amplitude and frequency.
Soundwaves cannot travel through space because it is a vacuum where there are no particles to carry sound vibrations.
Soundwaves have the ability to reflect off of any surface that does not absorb the waves. When sound reflects off of a surface, it produces an echo.