On May 8, 2009, at 1:31 PM, David Love wrote: > I understand what you are saying but it seems to me that the sound > is not > totally fresh. It's driven by the same energy but has been > converted into > something capable of moving more air. When you damp the string, the > sound > stops. That is because the soundboard needs energy input to produce a continuous sound. By itself, the soundboard has a very rapid decay (following a single blow, as in a hammer blow). > So if it was totally new sound wouldn't it have a life of its own? Sound doesn't have a life of its own. It is wave patterns in air that propagate (move outward from the original source). If the original source stops vibrating and moving air, "sound" stops. > > Talking about this as if sound and energy were the same thing seems > inaccurate. It may be somewhat confusing, but it is possible to tease the concepts apart. It takes energy to create sound. If the energy is coupled to something capable of moving a lot of air, the sound will be louder. There are lots of ways of expending energy that don't create any sound at all. If energy is put into a cycling system, like a string, it can produce musical sound. If the cycling system is capable of storing the energy temporarily (like a string, elastically moving back and forth), the sound can have greater duration. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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