Sound waves and wind

[ssfanatic]

Ok, so heres another thought from my scatterbrained self...
Can sound waves produce wind?
I know that to have sound, you have to have motion, and with motion naturally comes wind...so i dont know how to precede from there. Can we know, or are the two always related, therefore neither causing the other?
I realize that sounds waves are vibration of air particles, but not wind so dont give me the definition. Wind is different.

[thod]

They are different.

Wind is created by air moving from areas of high pressure to low pressure. The pressure gradiant in turn being the result of sunlight heating the air. The equator is hotter and so winds rush out from there. They get churned up by land masses, mountains, water from the oceans and existing weather conditions. Thus you end up with the fractal weather patterns whereas on Jupitor the weather mostly sticks around in bands since there are not these churning forces.

Sound is different in that no molecules move. The molecule moves a small distance before banging into another, which repeats, it thus the energy is transferred without the molecules moving far.

Wind - movement of air molecules
Sound - no movement of air molecules

[ssfanatic]

They are different.

Wind is created by air moving from areas of high pressure to low pressure. The pressure gradiant in turn being the result of sunlight heating the air. The equator is hotter and so winds rush out from there. They get churned up by land masses, mountains, water from the oceans and existing weather conditions. Thus you end up with the fractal weather patterns whereas on Jupitor the weather mostly sticks around in bands since there are not these churning forces.

Sound is different in that no molecules move. The molecule moves a small distance before banging into another, which repeats, it thus the energy is transferred without the molecules moving far.

Wind - movement of air molecules
Sound - no movement of air molecules
I know they are different, thats why is said it above :)
THough look what you said "sound is different in that no molecules move. The molecules move a small distance before banging into one another..." is there something i dont understand? or did you just look over that?
So the vibration of the particles and the transfer of energy between them is still movement, and movement always produces wind, however minute is may be.

[Blacklustre King]

Air particles must move to make sound, since air particles carry sound waves through vibration.

However as far as making wind, no. The particles will vibrate but they will not be projected into motion.

Sorry I only repeated what you just said...

[ssfanatic]

Air particles must move to make sound, since air particles carry sound waves through vibration.

However as far as making wind, no. The particles will vibrate but they will not be projected into motion.

Sorry I only repeated what you just said...
Ha, ye i was just wondering if there is a variable that i was overlooking. Science is a very broad topic and is easy to miss something essential. :)

[thod]

How to put it differently then. Image a tube full of balls. If you push a new one in this end, one comes out the other end, but a different one. Thats sound. If the tube is empty the same one rolls all the way through and comes out the other end, thats wind.

[rwyatt365]

I just thought I'd add my $0.02 just to confuse the question (bad INTJ, bad INTJ!).

Sound is the vibration of some transmission medium (air molecules, water molecules, etc.); the faster the medium vibrates (the frequency) the higher the pitch of the output, and the higher the amplitude of the vibration at a given frequency the louder the output.

Now, here's the interesting part – if you send a very low frequency signal to a loudspeaker you can actually feel the resultant sound. Also, if you send a sufficiently high amplitude signal to the same you can feel that as well – just ask anyone that has attended a concert. the question is, is that "wind"?

One could make the argument that "wind" is ultra-low frequency sound since, in effect, wind is just the movement (vibration) of air from a high-pressure area to a low-pressure area over a finite period of time. So, while sound that we hear is measured in cycles per second (Hertz), wind could be measured in cycles per day (or week, or month). But is that any less a vibration? Wind does move in a predominant direction, but air moving away from Point A must always be "replaced" by air from Point B (else we would be creating a vacuum, and we all know that nature abhors a vacuum). That replacement of air completes a cycle, which technically makes it a "vibration in a medium" and therefore is "sound"!

As "proof" I offer the thought experiment; assume I had a VERY large, indestructible speaker and an infinite power source. I place my speaker in Los Angeles and connect up my super amp and cranked it up to max power with a .0000115741 Hz square-wave signal (that's 1 cycle per day) to it. At 8AM that signal would slam the diaphragm of my super-speaker out, and at 8PM it would slam it back in – let's say, that the travel of the speaker was 1 mile (I said it was a large speaker!). Wouldn't you say that the resultant displacement of air would be perceived as wind? Could you tell that it was different from a naturally generated wind (other than it's intensity and regularity)? On the flipside, as far as the super-speaker was concerned, what is the difference between my 1 cycle/day square wave and it playing AC/DC (other than the square wave sounds better – OK, OK, don't kill me!)? I contend that both are "sound", just one is perceptible as music and the other as a hurricane.

[ssfanatic]

As "proof" I offer the thought experiment; assume I had a VERY large, indestructible speaker and an infinite power source. I place my speaker in Los Angeles and connect up my super amp and cranked it up to max power with a .0000115741 Hz square-wave signal (that's 1 cycle per day) to it. At 8AM that signal would slam the diaphragm of my super-speaker out, and at 8PM it would slam it back in – let's say, that the travel of the speaker was 1 mile (I said it was a large speaker!). Wouldn't you say that the resultant displacement of air would be perceived as wind? Could you tell that it was different from a naturally generated wind (other than it's intensity and regularity)? On the flipside, as far as the super-speaker was concerned, what is the difference between my 1 cycle/day square wave and it playing AC/DC (other than the square wave sounds better – OK, OK, don't kill me!)? I contend that both are "sound", just one is perceptible as music and the other as a hurricane.
Alright, that is very cool. (i dont really like AC/DC, im more of an Eagles type guy :)) But couldnt you say that the wind at the concert was created by the massive diaphragms in the speakers? THough i have never thought of wind as a low frequency sound wave, and that is plausible. So the only thing that is left is to change webster's, not that it will be easy :)

[Firelie]

You should watch some Mythbusters. They once did an episode about soundwaves putting out a candle.

[ssfanatic]

You should watch some Mythbusters. They once did an episode about soundwaves putting out a candle.
Ye, i love mythbusters, but that could have just been the diagphram of the stereo. I havnt seen that episode so i dont know the conclusion but ill have to look on you tube or something. Thanks.

[xhaan]

I know they are different, thats why is said it above :)
THough look what you said "sound is different in that no molecules move. The molecules move a small distance before banging into one another..." is there something i dont understand? or did you just look over that?
So the vibration of the particles and the transfer of energy between them is still movement, and movement always produces wind, however minute is may be.

Sound doesn't necessarily cause wind, it just knocks air particles around, creating a ripple... however, things that MAKE sound can cause wind, by actually displacing air, so therefore wind can accompany sound (but not always).

Like an extremely huge speaker with a lot of cone travel will actually PUSH air outward, physically scooping it, then some gets pulled in behind the cone because what was occupying that area has been displaced, then once the cone bounces back, it moves the air again, in reverse, pushing away the air behind the cone membrane and rapidly 'sucking' back the air in front of the speaker.

But a vibrating cellphone, on the other hand, doesn't displace that much air physically, it simply has something that is 'knocking around' very faintly and rapidly inside its body. Putting the cellphone on a table amplifies the sound because it's not only shaking in itself, it's also slightly impacting another object, transferring some of its energy through tiny impacts of vibration.

And now that I think of it, this is how snare drums work kind of. They have two membranes with a volume of air in between, when you strike the top membrane, it quickly bulges out the bottom one, which has taut 'snares' stretched across it. When the bottom membrane retreats back to its original position rapidly, the snares quickly catch up and strike a sharp echo from the bottom of the drum, which is what gives snare drums their sharp 'snap', and crisp drumrolls.

[ssfanatic]

Sound doesn't necessarily cause wind, it just knocks air particles around, creating a ripple... however, things that MAKE sound can cause wind, by actually displacing air, so therefore wind can accompany sound (but not always).

Like an extremely huge speaker with a lot of cone travel will actually PUSH air outward, physically scooping it, then some gets pulled in behind the cone because what was occupying that area has been displaced, then once the cone bounces back, it moves the air again, in reverse, pushing away the air behind the cone membrane and rapidly 'sucking' back the air in front of the speaker.

But a vibrating cellphone, on the other hand, doesn't displace that much air physically, it simply has something that is 'knocking around' very faintly and rapidly inside its body. Putting the cellphone on a table amplifies the sound because it's not only shaking in itself, it's also slightly impacting another object, transferring some of its energy through tiny impacts of vibration.

And now that I think of it, this is how snare drums work kind of. They have two membranes with a volume of air in between, when you strike the top membrane, it quickly bulges out the bottom one, which has taut 'snares' stretched across it. When the bottom membrane retreats back to its original position rapidly, the snares quickly catch up and strike a sharp echo from the bottom of the drum, which is what gives snare drums their sharp 'snap', and crisp drumrolls.
So we go back to what i said originally...
Sound and wind are partners, one may not produce the other but they are always present together. Where one is the other is also.

[Antares]

Ok, so heres another thought from my scatterbrained self...
Can sound waves produce wind?
I know that to have sound, you have to have motion, and with motion naturally comes wind...so i dont know how to precede from there. Can we know, or are the two always related, therefore neither causing the other?
I realize that sounds waves are vibration of air particles, but not wind so dont give me the definition. Wind is different.

Isn't sound waves simply the transfer of energy through the air molecules?

[ssfanatic]

Isn't sound waves simply the transfer of energy through the air molecules?
Weve already answered this above. And how its different then wind, but yet maybe the same.