PSYC 100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Eardrum, Basilar Membrane, Sound Intensity

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Christopher Miners

Document Summary

Cover the other senses: hearing (audition), touch (somatosensation and kinesthesis), and taste and smell (the chemical senses). This vibration causes adjacent air molecules to become compressed (regions of high air pressure) into local regions of increased pressure, and rarefied (regions of low air pressure) in local regions of decreased pressure. These pressure changes travel through the air to our ears in a wave. The amplitude of a sound wave determines the sound"s intensity. Frequency number of peaks per second (the inverse of wavelength). Spectrum a graph showing the different component frequencies (or wavelengths) in a sound (or a source of light). Compression occurs at the peaks and rarefactions at the troughs of the waveform. Periods amount of time required for one cycle of a sound wave to pass a particular point. The wavelength is the distance the sound travels in one cycle. The longer the period, the longer the wavelength and the lower the frequency.