Physics of Acoustic Waves

I wrote these notes to help clear up some of the confusion I undoubtedly caused when I tried to explain waves to you. Hopefully these will help organize the messy notes your teacher gave you.

Important Denitions

Figure 1: Depiction of a wave. Wave a wave is just a disturbance. When an ultrasonic transducer like PZT starts vibrating it causes the atoms next to it to vibrate, i.e. they are disturbed from their normal position. Then those atoms disturb the atoms next to them and so on. In other words the disturbance (or wave) travels through the material. This is all we mean by a wave - it is a disturbance that travels through a material.

When the shape of the disturbance (or wave) repeates over and over again in the same way, we call the wave a periodic wave, as shown in the picture below:

Figure 2: Snapshot of what the air molecules look like. The particles actually move in time. Note that air molecules do not actually travel from the loudspeaker to the ear (that would be wind). Each individual molecule only moves a small distance as it vibrates, but it causes the adjacent molecules to vibrate in a rippling eect all the way to the ear. So we say that the wave (or disturbance) travels or propagates through the air (or soft tissue, or whatever). Cycle this describes the action of a particle moving back and forth periodically. One cycle means that the particle has moved back and forth (or up and down) one time. When a particle completes the same motion again and again, we call this periodic motion. Wave Velocity (c) speed of sound of the acoustic wave in a given material. This only depends on the material properties, and on the type of wave (longitudinal or transverse), but it does not depend on the frequency or wavelength of the wave. The speed of sound is a constant value for a given material. Do not confuse this with the velocity or speed of the actual particles. The speed of sound, or wave velocity is the speed of the travelling wave, not of the particles. To reduce confusion, we sometimes call the speed of sound the acoustic velocity. Wavelength () This is the length between two peaks or two troughs in a wave. In other words, how far the wave (disturbance) travels after one cycle. 2

 Period (T ) the duration of one cycle of the wave. In other words, the time it takes for a particle to go up and back down again. Frequency (f ) the number of cycles per second. In other words, the number of times a particle makes one up and down motion in a second. Amplitude (A) the strength of the particle displacement. In other words, how far the particles move back and forth. Longitudinal Wave a wave (disturbance) which causes the particles in the material to move in the same direction that the wave (disturbance) is travelling. Transverse Wave a wave which causes the particles in the material to move perpendicular to the direction the wave is travelling. Attenuation The decrease in the amplitude of the wave which occurs as the wave travels further into a material. Each material has its own characteristic attenuation coecient (ac ) which determines how much a wave attenuates as it travels through it.

Important Equations
T = c = f = 1 f (1) (2) (3) (4)

= constant T Z = c I = A2

Important Concepts

Reection Remember, a dierence in acoustic impedance between two materials is what causes reection of an acoustic wave. We call this an acoustic impedance mismatch.

Refraction Refraction occurs because of a dierence in the speed of sound between two materials. This dierence in speed of sound causes the wave to change directions (or bend) as it is transmitted across the boundary into the other material. So remember, refraction deals with transmission of the wave at a boundary while reection is just that, reection at the boundary Speed of Sound (Velocity) Another very important thing: a change in frequency or wavelength of a wave does not change the speed of sound in a material. The speed of sound is a constant that only depends on the material properties, or whether you are dealing with a transverse or longitudinal wave. Within the same material, a longitudinal wave can have a dierent velocity than a transverse wave. This is called the mode of the wave (e.g. transverse mode or longitudinal mode). So in summary, the velocity of the wave only depends on the material in which the wave travels or on the mode of the wave.