Oh, wow, oh, oh, whoa, oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

Oh, wow. Hello, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast, episode 53, sound and music.

And I'm your host, James Vodor.

In this episode, we're going to look at sound and music, particularly the physics of sound,

looking at speed of sound, fundamental frequencies, standing waves, talk about harmonics,

and then apply this to some interesting sound phenomena,

for example, sonic booms and the Doppler effect. And then we'll apply this basic knowledge also

to gain a better understanding of music, including what music is, the different aspects of music.

We'll talk about beats and rhythm and timbre and things like that. Also, also will look at some of the major classes of

musical instruments and talk a little bit about how those work and how they differ from one

another. Recommended pre-listening for this episode is episode 24 vibrations and waves, which will

provide some of the background necessary to understand,

particularly the basic physics of sound. So, without further ado, let's get started.

Let's start by talking about the nature of sound. What is sound? Basically, the crucial thing to understand about sound is that sound is, well, it's a perception, so it's ultimately a construction

of the brain. But in terms of the physical basis of sound, it's a perception, so it's ultimately a construction of the brain.

But in terms of the physical basis of sound, it is merely variations in air pressure caused by

vibrations of air molecules.

That's fundamentally what sound is, vibrations of air molecules and resulting changes in air pressure.

And so everything that we hear, music, voices, other sounds, everything,

is just different patterns of variations in air pressure and different combinations of

those patterns of variation at different speeds and times and frequencies and so on. But fundamentally,

...