What type of waves are sound waves?
Sound waves are mechanical / compressional waves. (p.189) 34. How are sound waves created by your voice box and received by your ear drum? For the speaker, air passes over a vibrating muscle in the voice box, transferring the vibration to the air flowing out of the speaking persons mouth. The muscle is tightened for high pitch sounds and loosened for low pitch sounds. Increasing the air flow increases the volume (amplitude). For the listener, the sound waves hit the ear drum, and cause it to vibrate at the same frequency and amplitude as the sounds. Those vibrations are transferred to small bones in the inner ear, and then to nerves connected to those bones. (p.189) 35. What are electromagnetic waves? Electromagnetic waves are waves that move through electrical fields, and do not require matter to transfer energy. (p.190) How are they different from mechanical waves? Electromagnetic waves are different from mechanical waves, because mechanical waves require matter to transfer energy, w
