Sound Vibrations – Sound Waves and Sound Intensitiy

Sound waves are invisible; we can only hear them. But is there a way to visualize them somehow? Sure, here they are! All right; it’s not quite so simple. In order to make sound visible, we need a speaker, a frequency generator, and an amplifier. We then record the sound from the speaker using a microphone, and send the signal to a lamp via the amplifier. The lamp’s brightness is a measure of the sound volume. The greater the distance between the microphone and the sound source is, the lower the sound, and the dimmer the lamp.

We can symbolically represent a sine wave having a certain frequency using a spinning wheel whose rotation frequency corresponds to sound frequency, and radius to sound amplitude. The microphone picks up the sound, and transmits it via the amplifier to the lamp in the form of an electrical signal. Since the volume decreases with the distance, the radius of the wheel becomes increasingly smaller.

But where exactly is the wave? To make the wave visible, we need the so-called phase difference, that is, the displacement of the pointer, which occurs due to the distance between the speaker and the microphone.