Sound Lab
Experiment with amplitude, frequency, wavelength, and period. Each property shapes the wave in a different way.
Sound is vibration
Sound is vibration: a back-and-forth movement. Imagine plucking a guitar string: it blurs because it's moving rapidly in both directions. That motion is vibration. When something vibrates, it pushes the medium: the material around it. For everyday sound, the medium is air, but sound also travels through water, metal, and tissue around it in waves: disturbances that spread outward, like ripples when you drop a stone in water.
Those waves carry energy: the ability to make something happen. A sound wave's energy is what moves your eardrum, which is how you hear to your ears, and your brain interprets them as sound.
Two things change how a sound wave looks and sounds: how tall the wave is, and how fast it repeats.
A wave moves through a material
Each particle in the material stays in place... moving back and forth with the wave
The wave is the pattern carrying energy... through the particles that make up the medium
Sound is the vibration of particles moving through matter
Key Terms
Four properties describe every wave. SPI Exam Topic
How these apply in ultrasound → future lesson. For now, the key idea: these four properties describe every wave.
Quick Check
Review Complete
You've finished the acoustic waves check-in.