Sound. John Tyndall

of sound, a lamina of air, when urged against its neighbor lamina, delivers up its motion and recoils, in virtue of the elastic force exerted between them; and the more rapid this delivery and recoil, or in other words the greater the elasticity of the air, the greater is the velocity of the sound.

      Fig. 3.

      A very instructive mode of illustrating the transmission of a sound-pulse is furnished by the apparatus represented in Fig. 3, devised by my assistant, Mr. Cottrell. It consists of a series of wooden balls separated from each other by spiral springs. On striking the knob A, a rod attached to it impinges upon the first ball B, which transmits its motion to C, thence it passes to E, and so on through the entire series. The arrival at D is announced by the shock of the terminal ball against the wood, or, if we wish, by the ringing of a bell. Here the elasticity of the air is represented by that of the springs. The pulse may be rendered slow enough to be followed by the eye.

      Scientific education ought to teach us to see the invisible as well as the visible in nature, to picture with the vision of the mind those operations which entirely elude bodily vision; to look at the very atoms of matter in motion and at rest, and to follow them forth, without ever once losing sight of them, into the world of the senses, and see them there integrating themselves in natural phenomena. With regard to the point now under consideration, we must endeavor to form a definite image of a wave of sound. We ought to see mentally the air-particles, when urged outward by the explosion of our balloon, crowding closely together; but immediately behind this condensation we ought to see the particles separated more widely apart. We must, in short, to be able to seize the conception that a sonorous wave consists of two portions, in the one of which the air is more dense, and in the other of which it is less dense than usual. A condensation and a rarefaction, then, are the two constituents of a wave of sound. This conception shall be rendered more complete in our next lecture.

§ 2. Experiments in Vacuo, in Hydrogen, and on Mountains

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      That air is thus necessary to the propagation of sound was proved by a celebrated experiment made before the Royal Society, by a philosopher named Hawksbee, in 1705.9 He so fixed a bell within the receiver of an air-pump that he could ring the bell when the receiver was exhausted. Before the air was withdrawn the sound of the bell was heard within the receiver; after the air was withdrawn the sound became so faint as to be hardly perceptible. An arrangement is before you which enables us to repeat in a very perfect manner the experiment of Hawksbee. Within this jar, G G′, Fig. 4, resting on the plate of an air-pump is a

Fig. 4. bell, B, associated with cloc-kwork.10 After the jar has been exhausted as perfectly as possible, I release, by means of a rod, r r′, which passes air-tight through the top of the vessel, the detent which holds the hammer. It strikes, and you see it striking, but only those close to the bell can hear the sound. Hydrogen gas, which you know is fourteen times lighter than air, is now allowed to enter the vessel. The sound of the bell is not augmented by the presence of this attenuated gas, though the receiver is now full of it. By working the pump, the atmosphere round the bell is rendered still more attenuated. In this way we obtain a vacuum more perfect than that of Hawksbee, and this is important, for it is the last traces of air that are chiefly effective in this experiment. You now see the hammer pounding the bell, but you hear no sound. Even when the ear is placed against the exhausted receiver not the faintest tinkle is heard. Observe also that the bell is suspended by strings, for if it were allowed to rest upon the plate of the air-pump the vibrations would be communicated to the plate, and thence transmitted to the air outside. Permitting the air to enter the jar with as little noise as possible, you immediately hear a feeble sound, which grows louder as the air becomes more dense, until finally every person in this large assembly distinctly hears the ringing of the bell.11

      Sir John Leslie found hydrogen singularly incompetent to act as the vehicle of the sound of a bell rung in the gas. More than this, he emptied a receiver like that before you of half its air, and plainly heard the ringing of the bell. On permitting hydrogen to enter the half-filled receiver until it was wholly filled, the sound sank until it was scarcely audible. This result remained an enigma until it received a simple and satisfactory explanation at the hands of Prof. Stokes. When a common pendulum oscillates it tends to form a condensation in front and a rarefaction behind. But it is only a tendency; the motion is so slow, and the air is so elastic, that it moves away in front before it is sensibly condensed, and fills the space behind before it can become sensibly dilated. Hence waves or pulses are not generated by the pendulum. It requires a certain sharpness of shock to produce the condensation and rarefaction which constitute a wave of sound in air.

      The more elastic and mobile the gas, the more able will it be to move away in front and to fill the space behind, and thus to oppose the formation of rarefactions and condensations by a vibrating body. Now hydrogen is much more mobile than air; and hence the production of sonorous waves in it is attended with greater difficulty than in air. A rate of vibration quite competent to produce sound-waves in the one may be wholly incompetent to produce them in the other. Both calculation and observation prove the correctness of this explanation, to which we shall again refer.

      At great elevations in the atmosphere sound is sensibly diminished in loudness. De Saussure thought the explosion of a pistol at the summit of Mont Blanc to be about equal to that of a common cracker below. I have several times repeated this experiment; first, in default of anything better, with a little tin cannon, the torn remnants of which are now before you, and afterward with pistols. What struck me was the absence of that density and sharpness in the sound which characterize it at lower elevations. The pistol-shot resembled the explosion of a champagne bottle, but it was still loud. The withdrawal of half an atmosphere does not very materially affect our ringing bell, and air of the density found at the top of Mont Blanc is still capable of powerfully affecting the auditory nerve. That highly attenuated air is able to convey sound of great intensity is forcibly illustrated by the explosion of meteorites at elevations where the tenuity of the atmosphere must be almost infinite. Here, however, the initial disturbance must be exceedingly great.

      The motion of sound, like all other motion, is enfeebled by its transference from a light body to a heavy one. When the receiver which has hitherto covered our bell is removed you hear how much more loudly it rings in the open air. When the bell was covered the aërial vibrations were first communicated to the heavy glass jar, and afterward by the jar to the air outside; a great diminution of intensity being the consequence. The action of hydrogen gas upon the voice is an illustration of the same kind. The voice is formed by urging air from the lungs through an organ called the larynx, where it is thrown into vibration by the vocal chords which thus generate sound. But when the lungs are filled with hydrogen, the vocal chords on speaking produce a vibratory motion in the hydrogen, which then transfers the motion to the outer air. By this transference from a light gas to a heavy one the voice is so weakened as to become a mere squeak.12

      The intensity of a sound depends on the density of the air in which the sound is generated, and not on that of the air in which it is heard.13 Supposing the summit of Mont Blanc to be equally distant from the top of the Aiguille Verte and the bridge at Chamouni; and supposing two observers stationed, the one upon the bridge and the other upon the Aiguille: the report of a cannon fired on Mont Blanc would reach both observers with the same intensity, though in the one case the sound would pursue its way through the rare air above, while in the other it would descend though the denser air below. Again, let a straight line equal to that from the bridge at Chamouni to the summit of Mont Blanc be measured along the earth’s surface in the valley of Chamouni, and let two observers be stationed, the one on the summit and the other at the end of the line: the report of a cannon fired on the bridge would reach both observers with the same intensity, though in the one case the sound would be propagated through the dense air of the valley, and in the other case would ascend through the rarer air of the mountain. Finally, charge two cannon equally, and fire one of them at Chamouni and the other at