Originally posted by Forcizzle
well that suck if it took that long for women
Yeah...it would. 😑 Anyways.... There are 293 ways to make a dollar. Our class, in 4th grade, split up into groups to see how many ways we could come up with it. I think my group only got about 200.... Well, it was still fun. 😛
Here's why:
First off, we must define "sound". By definition, sound is a form of energy produced by vibrations. Note that sound is not vibrations.
When the tree falls, it sends out vibrations in all directions through the air around it; vibrations caused by the wood snapping, vibrations caused by the leaves rustling, etc. These vibrations are nothing more than compressions and rarefactions of the air. (The same would be true under water, only the carrier medium would be water, not air, and the transmission of the waves would be somewhat slower.) We will call these compressions and rarefactions waves.
These waves travel out in all directions through the air. If, by chance, someone WAS standing nearby, then the waves would eventually reach this person. What happens then?
First, the waves enter the ear through the external acoustic meatus and travel to the tympanum. The tympanum vibrates at the same frequency as the original waves, which causes the malleus, incus, and stapes (the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, the three bones of the middle ear) to move back and forth, again at the same frequency.
The stapes is connected to the cochlea by way of the oval window. Inside the cochlea is cochlear fluid. The stapes moves back and forth in the oval window, which in turn causes the cochlear fluid to vibrate. (Keep in mind that all these vibrations continue to be at the very same frequency as the source vibration, i.e., the vibration caused by the falling tree.)
The vibrating fluid causes the tiny hairlike cilia inside the cochlea to also vibrate. Here is where the transmission of the waves goes from physical to electrical (well, electrical in a sense). The cilia are all connected to the auditory nerve, the nerve which leads to the auditory center of the brain. The cilia stimulate the auditory nerve, which produces a current along the nerve, which is carried to the auditory center of the brain. (It isn't really a current as we know it. The signal travels along the nerve by way of sodium and potassium pumps. The sodium and potassium have a positive and negative charge, and the pumping action causes an alternating positive/negative action along the nerve.)
Finally, when the signal reaches the auditory center of the brain, the brain interprets the signal, and converts it into what WE know as sound. Then, and only then, do we hear sound. So, sound does not exist around us, it exists inside the brain.
So, what happens if there is nobody there to "hear" the sound? The vibrations keep going off in all directions until they weaken to the point of nonexistence, and there would be no sound.
The same thing happens in space. There is no sound in space, because there is no medium to carry the waves from the source to the destination. It is actually the reverse of what happens on earth. There would be someone there to "hear" the sound, but the waves would never leave the source because there is nothing to carry them to the person. Thus, there would be no sound.
🙂
corn