ShmoopTube

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Here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by sound waves the [Sound waves appear]

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gesture you see when a song greets you today's question is the height of a

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sound wave is known as the what and here are your potential answers okay well here we

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go..... well we'll do you a favor and eliminate

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the obviously wrong one first seeing as cochlea is the nail shaped portion of the

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inner ear there's no way it has anything at all to do with the technical measure

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of a sound wave one down four to go and remember slow and steady wins the race [A slug slowly moves]

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here.......Could it be D energy, well sound energy density is calculated by this

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mathematical calculation where p is the sound pressure, v is the particle

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velocity, c is the speed of sound and well it's a lot more complicated than [Man rolls his eyes]

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just the height of a sound wave so we can lose D now what about E; volume

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well volume isn't even a scientific term our purposes that option might as well

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not even exist so cross out E. That leaves us with amplitude and frequency

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well the frequency of the sound wave refers to the number of cycles per

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minute the vibration has aka the number of times this wave here goes up and down [Wave turns green]

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this is most often measured in Hertz and ultimately determines the pitch of the [Soundwave appears beside a girls ear]

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sound that we hear, the deafening squeals of a small child would have a much

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higher frequency than the smooth baritone of Elvis Presley not that we're [Elvis singing on stage and a crying baby appears]

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discriminating against any certain frequencies but well you know

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you're all special in your own way while this measures the frequency of those ups

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and downs it doesn't measure the height which is what we're looking for so B

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ain't nothing but a hound dog the height of the wave is referred to as amplitude

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the taller the wave, the louder the sound so in the case of our baby and the king [A baby in a crib and Elvis holding a guitar]

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here you can clearly see which one is louder and which one you're giving back

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to its mommy so A is the correct choice A is in anyone got earplugs [Man with Elvis's face inserts ear plugs]

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