![]() The sound wave has to bounce off the water and return sooner to be in sync with the tuning fork. The sound wave is only synchronized with the tuning fork at certain pipe lengths.įor higher frequencies, the tube needs to be shorter to resonate. When you change the effective length of the tube by moving it up and or down in the water, you change how long it takes for a sound wave to travel down and back up the tube. If the tuning fork creates a new compression at the same time an existing compression reaches the top of the tube, the two compressions combine and the sound gets louder. This process repeats over and over again. Air rushes into this expansion to create a compression. This produces a wave of expanded air that travels back down the tube, bounces off the water, and returns to the end of the tube. This expansion of the air doesn’t stop when it reaches the end of the tube, and the air molecules overshoot the open end of the tube. When the compression wave reaches the mouth of the tube, it expands outward into the air. The compression wave reflects off the surface of the water within the tube and then travels back up the tube (Note: in the diagram below, the water surface is referred to as the "bottom" of the tube). In a sort of domino effect, a pulse of compression (a sound wave) travels down into the tube. ![]() These molecules, in turn, squeeze the molecules next to them, and so on. As the tuning fork bends outward in its vibration, it squeezes together the air molecules in its path (click to enlarge diagram below).
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