Sound waves

[John Delacour]

At 9:08 AM -0800 12/5/01, Delwin D Fandrich wrote:

>If I recall, you were saying 'sound' travels through the wood. Sound is
>waves, but it's not the same thing.
>
>Or, did I misunderstand what you wrote?

Probably not, because rightly or wrongly I was referring to as sound 
the waves created by the string, whereas properly speaking, sound is, 
I suppose, what reaches our ears through the air as a compression 
wave produced mainly by the excursions of the soundboard.  I think 
there will be no argument that the impact of the hammer against the 
string does not constitute sound, but the complex transverse, lateral 
(never mind also lengthwise) and mixed motions of the string, which 
themselves are audible to some extent, constitute the 'sound' that is 
eventually to be emitted in a more audible and somewhat modified form 
into a body of air.  I'd see it as a moot point whether you refer to 
the fully determined wave patterns produced by these motions as sound 
or not, since the complex pattern of shocks that enters the system 
contain the blueprint for the sound that emerges from it as audible 
shocks to the air that impinge on our sense.

I'll leave it there for the moment so you can comment on that much 
and tell me whether I am making an error in principle here or simply 
using the word sound in a misleading way.  In other words, if I 
replaced the word 'sound' with 'shock wave pattern' or something 
unless I was talking about the shock waves that reach my sense 
organs, would I still be in error?

>The traditional and historic model of the soundboard has sound traveling
>through the soundboard, as you described, but this is not the way the
>soundboard really works.

Well, I'd rather get the above out of the way first, but since you're 
almost certainly going to use the word energy in your reply, I'd like 
also to have that clearly defined.  We are clearly not talking of 
electrical energy which exhibits a certain form and nor are we 
talking of nuclear energy, which is quite different; and we are not 
talking of the energy in a hydraulic turbine system.  So this energy 
is of a certain type which is seeded as x and flourishes as nx + y. 
It seems to me that "sound energy" might be a way to describe it, but 
maybe you'd question that as well.  One way or another, I think 
'energy' is not a definite enough term to describe the phenomenon.

I hope we can deal with this a step at a time.

JD