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I. § 2.] CONNEXION OF SOUND WITH MOTION. :\ |
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that suitable precautions are taken to prevent comÂmunication of Sound to the external air through the body of the receiver, the bell will appear to ring more and more feebly as the exhaustion proceeds, until at last it altogether ceases to be heard. While the air is being readmitted, the sound of the bell will gradually recover its original loudness. This experiment shows that Sound cannot travel in vacuo, but requires for its transmission a material medium of some kind. The air of the atmosphere is, in the vast majority of cases, the medium which conveys to the ear the mechanical impulse which that wonderful organ translates, as it were, into the language of Sound.
2. Having ascertained that a material medium acts in every case as the carrier of Sound, we have next to examine in what manner it performs this function. The roughest observations suffice to put us on the right track in this enquiry by pointing to a connexion between Sound and Motion. The passage through the air of sounds of very great intensity is accompanied by effects which prove the atmosphere to be in a state of violent commotion. The explosion of a powder-magazine is capable of shattering the windows of houses at several miles' distance. In the case of sounds of only ordinary loudness the accompanying air-motion manifests itself in no such
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