Sound Waves

As you know, sound is a longitudinal pressure wave that travels in air, at approximately 344 m/s at the room temperature, 20 degrees Celsius under one atmosphere. In Lab 2A, you will be integrating your Arduino with an ultrasonic sensor. The ultrasonic sensor outputs the time taken for a sound wave generated from the sensor to bounce off an object and return. This information can help us identify the speed of sound. In Lab 2B, you will study a more complex property of waves known as interference. Interference is defined as "​the combination of two or more waveforms to form a resultant wave in which the displacement is either reinforced or canceled." Therefore, if two sound waveforms are observed and they are in certain configuration, they will cause an interference pattern to occur which could results in either a constructive or destructive pattern.To do so you will use your computer to generate sound waves from its two speakers. In Lab 2C you will cover the concept of Fourier series and cover the example of a square wave. You will begin by practicing Python to create the square wave though its Fourier series, before analyzing a square wave produced by Adacity. In Lab 2D you will analysis a variety of different sound files and perform a FFT of the waveforms. You will then go over the spectrograms of the data.
  • Lab 2A - Generator and Observation of Sound Waves 
  • Lab 2B - Interference of Sound Waves
  • Lab 2C - Fourier Series
  • Lab 2D - Complex Waveforms

Lab 2A/B

The following slides have the material for this week.The prelab for 2A will be due before class on Monday/Tuesday.
The in-class assignment for 2A and the prelab for 2B will be due before class on Wednesday/Thursday.

Lab 2C/D

The following slides have the material for this week.The prelabs for this week are not do this week but should be read throughly.
The in-class assignment for 2C will be due before class on Wednesday/Thursday and there will be a report due regarding this week's material.
Sept. 27, 2024 by Javier Carmona