The Uses of Sound Waves

Use of sound waves: Sonic waves can transmit vibrations through the medium, so that the energy gathered in the vibrations is transmitted. The transverse wave is a vibration in the direction perpendicular to the traveling direction of the wave, and the longitudinal wave is the vibration along the traveling direction of the wave. These waves have quantifiable speed, wavelength and frequency.

Sonar uses sound waves to detect distant objects. (Radio waves used in radar are more like light than sound.) The use of sonar "invented" by bats and dolphins long before using by human beings. Bats find insects flying at night by generating high frequency sound waves that can not be heard by human ears. These waves hit insects and reflect on the bats' ears, allowing bats to detect the position of insects. Biologists call it echo localization. By vibrating an object, sound waves called compressed waves are generated. As the vibrating object moves toward us, the air molecules are pushed closer. The opposite happens when the object vibrates from us. Like a tough toy you can simulate this in one dimension with a long spring. Extend the spring to draw the coil of the spring. When the compression coil is released, the compression wave is removed from its original position.

Sound propagates as longitudinal waves in air or other medium where mechanical vibrations constituting the waves occur along the propagation direction of the waves. By compressing and compressing several rotations and then releasing them, longitudinal waves can be created in the coil spring and the length of the moving spring can be compressed. Air can be thought of as being composed of layers similar to such coils and they propagate as air layers "pushing" and "pulling" to each other, like compression moving down the spring.

Longitudinal waves can be conceptualized as pressure waves from time to time. The most common pressure wave is sound waves. Sonic waves are generated by compression media, usually air. Longitudinal sound waves are waves of pressure deviations that alternate with equilibrium pressures, resulting in local region compression and sparsity. Substances in the medium are periodically displaced by sound waves and therefore oscillate. Regardless of whether people are talking or striking, as people emit sound they will compress air particles to some extent. By doing so, they created transverse waves. When people listen to their sounds, their ears respond sensitively to pressure differences and interpret waves as different sounds.