PSYC 212 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Fourier Analysis, Tuning Fork, Spectral Density
Document Summary
Sound is the rhythms changes in air pressure. Sound is a longitudinal travelling wave of pressure disturbance within a medium. Things that vibrates change the air pressure around them. Depending on the amount and rate of change we can hear these remote vibrations. Sound cn be described by a set of qualities, such as loudness and pitch. Tuning fork: produces a pure tone: pure tone: simplest soundwave that can be produced in nature. The term we are the most familiar with in describing the physical characteristic of sounds in term of their loudness is intensity: we use the bel (b) or decibel (db) Cycle: represents a complete vibration containing one instance of compression and one of rarefaction. Hertz: way to define the frequency pattern is by the number of complete cycles per second. Although sounds can encompass a large range of frequencies, humans are only capable of hearing sounds under optimal conditions in the range of 20-20000hz.
