Sound: Study Guide Answers

1.) What is sound? A type of energy you can hear. It is caused by vibrations.  What is a vibration? A back and forth movement 2.) What is volume? The loudness or softness of a sound How is the loudness of sound measured? In decibels If sounds are loud, how can you protect your hearing? With earplugs or special earphones that block sounds. You can also make sure that you don’t turn headphones up too loud when listening to music.

3.) Sound travels in compression waves. We saw what this looked like when we stretched out a slinky and watched the wave squeeze together and move apart. 4.) What is pitch? The highness or lowness of a sound. What is frequency? The number of vibrations per second.

5.) Smaller objects vibrate at a higher frequency than larger objects do and have a higher frequency. 6.) What type of surface would a sound have to hit to create an echo? A hard or curved surface.

7.) Solids, liquids and gases are all a type of medium_ that sound can travel through. Sound travels slowest through gases like air and fastest through solids like wood or steel. 8.) Dogs are capable of hearing sounds with higher frequencies than people can hear. That’s why your dog can hear a dog whistle that you can’t hear!

9.) Bats and dolphins use echolocation to locate objects using sound waves.  10.) Many animals do not have outside ears. A snake feels vibrations through its jaw and crickets pick up vibrations through structures near their hind legs_. 11.) Noises made by men and their machines during shipping, oil drilling and operations of submarines may interfere with the signals from whales. What can this disrupt? It can disrupt feeding and migration and might even cause permanent hearing loss.