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The sound waves are generated by a sound source, such as the vibrating diaphragm of a stereo speaker. The sound source creates vibrations in the surrounding medium. As the source continues to vibrate the medium, the vibrations propagate away from the source at the speed of sound, thus forming the sound wave.
If the wave is a sound wave and the sound source is moving faster than the speed of sound, the resulting shock wave creates a sonic boom. Lord Rayleigh predicted the following effect in his classic book on sound: if the observer were moving from the (stationary) source at twice the speed of sound, a musical piece previously emitted by that ...
This falls within the domain of physical acoustics. In fluids, sound propagates primarily as a pressure wave. In solids, mechanical waves can take many forms including longitudinal waves, transverse waves and surface waves. Acoustics looks first at the pressure levels and frequencies in the sound wave and how the wave interacts with the ...
An acoustic wave is a mechanical wave that transmits energy through the movements of atoms and molecules. Acoustic waves transmit through fluids in a longitudinal manner (movement of particles are parallel to the direction of propagation of the wave); in contrast to electromagnetic waves that transmit in transverse manner (movement of particles at a right angle to the direction of propagation ...
The behaviour of sound waves encountering a different medium is dictated by the differing acoustic impedances. As with electrical impedances, there are matches and mismatches and energy will be transferred for certain frequencies (up to nearly 100%) whereas for others it could be mostly reflected (again, up to very large percentages).
Output of a computer model of underwater acoustic propagation in a simplified ocean environment. A seafloor map produced by multibeam sonar. Underwater acoustics (also known as hydroacoustics) is the study of the propagation of sound in water and the interaction of the mechanical waves that constitute sound with the water, its contents and its boundaries.
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Sound waves in solids are composed of compression waves (just as in gases and liquids) and a different type of sound wave called a shear wave, which occurs only in solids. Shear waves in solids usually travel at different speeds than compression waves, as exhibited in seismology .