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How do scientists know how acoustics work? (piefed.social)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/askphysics@lemmy.world
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I've seen lot of theory about how it works.
But how do they get to that conclusion?
As far a i know, you can see that it's air vibrating bc when there's a loud noise you can feel the floor vibrating or if i drop something in a table and i place my hand on it i can feel the table vibrating as well. But how do they know it in more detail. How do they know about the pith and that it's a wave?

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

I get that, but OP wants to know HOW they knew it was a wave, and I only have modern examples that show the 'how'. If you can expand on how Pythagoras 'knew' or 'demonstrated' it was a wave, you should add that to your reply lol.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    The point of my reply was to debunk what you said. I've not read that text and I am no expert. I can only speculate.

    If you know that sound is caused by something vibrating, as was known, and you also know that when something moves through air it pushes the air away, you can reasonably conclude that sound is a vibration in the air caused by a vibration in an object.

    But I don't know how he came to that conclusion, or what, of any he ran experiments he ran to show it.

    My point is that anyone saying you need a microphone to learn about acoustics are talking nonsense. You have to already understand acoustics to even build the first microphone.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I gotcha. I have a bedroom which resonates at a certain frequency of my voice, and it could be compared to the resonance of a wave when you get the driving frequency just right. I didn't need a microphone to quickly realise this from my knowledge, but the ancients were extremely well-versed or understanding of it without using current modern terms or techniques.

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