Sound is so constant that we rarely stop to ask what it actually is. The answer is surprisingly physical: sound is a wave of pressure rippling through the air, and everything from music to speech to why one room sounds different from another follows from that simple fact. This episode explores how sound is made, how we hear it, and the science of acoustics.

You'll come away understanding what sound really is, why it needs a medium to travel through, what pitch and loudness correspond to physically, how your ear turns vibrations into hearing, and why rooms sound the way they do.

Talking Science is sponsored by Kinsoft. Visit www.kinsoft.com.au

Further reading: Physics Classroom – “Sound Waves and Music”; Acoustical Society of America – education resou ...