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Physics for Kids4 chapters | 67 lessons
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Kelli is an elementary school teacher with a specialist degree in Early Childhood Education.
Do you ever wonder how you hear all the different sounds around you? Every day, you hear sounds when you talk to your family and friends, listen to music, go to the playground, and do so many different things! Well, you hear all of these sounds because of sound vibrations, invisible waves that move rapidly up and down, and that our brain reads as sound.
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Did you know that the vocal chords in your throat vibrate? That's how they create sound so that you can talk and sing! Put your hand up to your throat and then sing a silly song. You can feel your vocal cords vibrating as the air you push upward moves them rapidly back and forth to create sound.
All sounds are produced by vibrations--everything from clapping your hands to playing an instrument to knocking on a door. So how does a sound start? It begins with some type of movement or event, like slapping your hands together quickly, plucking the string of a guitar, or banging your fist against a door.
When an event like this happens, it causes the molecules of the object--the tiny units of matter that make it up--to vibrate. This causes other molecules around it to vibrate as well, and the vibrations continue moving through the molecules until they reach your ear. The vibrations then travel into your brain, which understands these vibrations as sound.
Not all things are made from the same material, and sound vibrations travel through each material in a unique way. Liquids, solids, and gasses are all different forms of matter, and vibrations move through them at different speeds.
For example, sound travels faster through solids than it does through gasses. And you may be surprised to hear that sound travels about four times faster in water than it does in the air. It all has to do with the molecules--the closer the molecules are together, the faster they can move from one to the next.
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Sounds can have many differences based on their characteristics. One characteristic is volume, which is how loud or quiet a sound is. The volume of a sound depends on how tall or short the sound wave is. For instance, the sound wave of someone banging on the drums will be taller and louder than the sound wave of someone whispering to a friend.
Pitch is another characteristic of sound. While it's easy to confuse pitch and volume, they are very different. Pitch is how high or low a sound's tone is, and it depends on the frequency of the sound wave. (Frequency means how close together or spread apart the waves are). For example, a high-pitch noise, like a cat's meow, is going to have many waves close together. A low-pitch noise, like a deep clap of thunder, will have waves that are more spread out.
All sounds are created from vibrations, which are invisible waves that move rapidly up and down, and that our brain reads as sound. Sounds can differ in volume and pitch, and these differences depend on the size and shape of the sound waves.
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Physics for Kids4 chapters | 67 lessons
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