Science museum report sound

Dasha, Emily, Milla, Kim

Sound is a vibration that propagates as a wave of pressure through a substance like gas,
liquid or solid. Sound exists of sound waves. Sound waves are created by a sound source,
such as a vibrating diaphragm or a stereo speaker. The sound source creates vibrations in
the air around the sound source. As the source continues with creating vibrations, the
vibrations propagate away from the source at the speed of sound (The speed of sound is 343
meters per second). Thus forming a sound wave. The human ear can only detect sound
vibrations with a frequency between 20 and 20,000 Hz. When you get older it can drop to
15,000 Hz. Also very soft sounds can only be heard from a certain sound level, which is
indicated by the hearing threshold. Very loud noises are unpleasant, and from 120 dB it will
hurt, this is called the pain threshold.
Christian Doppler, 1805-1853, Austrian, discovered the Doppler Effect. The Doppler Effect is
that sound waves would have a higher frequency if the source was moving toward the
observer and a lower frequency if the source was moving away from the observer. A
commonly used example of the Doppler effect is a train. When a train is approaching, the
whistle has a higher pitch than normal. You can hear the change in pitch as the train passes.
Hippolyte Fizeau, 1819- 1896, French, argued that the Doppler effect with respect to sound
should also apply to any wave motion, particularly that of light.

Italian physicist, Galileo, was the first scientist to record the relationship between the
frequency of the wave to the pitch it produces. He was able to come to this conclusion after
taking a chisel and scraping it against a brass plate. From there, he began to observe that the
pitch of the screech varied directly with the spacing of the grooves, which are created from
the contact between the chisel and the brass plate.
Marin Mersenne, French mathematician, was the first person to record the speed of sound
as it travels through air in the year of 1640. Mersenne also discovered the second and third
laws of strings.

Pythagoras, a philosopher from the 6th century B.C., noted the relationship between the
length of a vibrating string and the tone it produces, what is now known as the first law of
strings. Pythagoras also understood that the sensation of sound is caused by vibrations. Not
long after his time it was recognized that this sensation depends on vibrations traveling
through the air and striking the eardrum.
Ernst Chladni, a German physicist, made analyses of sound-producing vibrations during the
late 1700's. In 1801 the French mathematician Fourier discovered that such complex waves
as those produced by a vibrating string with all its overtones consist of a series of simple
repeating waves.

A lot of work on the waves was done in the 19th century, Thomas Young, an English physicist,
did research especially on diffraction and interference. An important contribution to the
understanding of acoustics was made by Wallace Clement Sabine, a physicist at Harvard
University, in the late 1890's. Sabine was asked to improve the acoustics of the main lecture
hall in Harvard's Fogg Art Museum. He was first to measure reverberation time, which he
found to be 5 1/2 seconds in the lecture hall. Experimenting first with seat cushions from a
nearby theatre, and later with other sound-absorbing materials and other methods, Sabine
laid the foundation for architectural acoustics. He designed Boston Symphony Hall (opened
in 1900), the first building with scientifically formulated acoustics.

Zhang Heng was a Han Chinese polymath from Nanyang who lived during the Han dynasty.
Educated in the capital cities of Luoyang and Changan, he achieved success as an
astronomer, mathematician, scientist, engineer, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist,
poet, statesman and literary scholar.

4.
The museum was surrounded by trees. You would not expect it to be so well hidden in the
giant forest. The museum itself was built a bit like a castle, there were 6 telescopes in domes
that were placed on places where lookout towers would be built, there was also a seventh
that was a little further in the forest. to enter you had to go through the souvenir shop, and
after that you had to go up the stairs. And then you came out on the platform where
everything stands. It was a bit classified as a playground. Because outside you saw all
playground equipment that were made so that you could play with them and still learn
something. Inside it was quite narrow, it was just a long stretch with all kinds of experiments.
These experiments were about anything and everything: you had experiments that were
about how crystals were made, how sandstorms became sandstorms, there were also a few
experiments with which you could experience action reaction. Eventually when you walked
out of the long hallway you came to a room where all sound experiments stood (it was a very
small room). There were experiments such as hearing illusions or tests on how good your
hearing is. By noon our whole class had lunch there too, unfortunately we had to leave
afterwards but if I ever get the chance to go back, I will go back.