Auditory Tollin Flashcards
When someone hears a sounds, what is physically being sensed?
Sound is a change in density of the physical medium that comprises our surroundings, thus sound is literally a change in pressure. Compression describes regions of increased density, while rarefaction describes regions of low density. In tandem, these properties creates waves of high and low pressure.
define amplitude
the height of the wave
define wavelength
the distance between two peaks of a wave. It is literally the frequency at which a wave crest will impact a single point.
how fast does sound move in air?
about 343m/s
can sound move through mediums other than air?
Yup - water, metal, and anything that has mass. The only thing sound cant move through is a vacuum. The speed of sound will change with the density of the medium it is traveling through.
When we hear a sound as being louder in comparison to another sound, what is property of the sound wave has changed? And how has it changed?
loudness is a directly proportional to the amplitude of a wave. The louder a sound, the bigger the wave. The small the sound the smaller the wave.
How do we measure loudness
on a log scale called a decibel (DB)
what is a decibel (DB)
It is a measure of sound intensity/loudness, and it is the log ratio of two pressures. 20 micropascals is always the denominator, and is supposed to the represent the threshold of human hearing.
If you sit front row at a Metallica concert, is there a chance of loosing your hearing?
First of all, if you sit at a Metallica concert you don’t deserve to have legs. And why have the ability to sense sound if this amazing ability isn’t going to sense Metallica? If the flying spaghetti monster, known as god, knew people were not listening to Metallica, it would eat you. Now that we have determined the purpose for hearing is to listen to Metallica, the answer is yes - above 120 db spl you can have permanent hearing loss.
When we hear the pitch change, what physical property of sound is being altered?
frequency!
what is the range pitch humans can perceive?
20-20,000Hz
What is a hertz?
unit of frequency defined as the number of wave lengths per second.
what is the smallest change in pitch perceived by humans?
3.6hz change
auditory threshold
smallest db spl someone can detect.
frictive consonants
t, s, f - all high frequency sounds
