|
Sound Speed Gradient
In acoustics, the sound speed gradient is the rate of change of the speed of sound with distance, for example with depth in the ocean, or height in the Earth's atmosphere. A sound speed gradient leads to refraction of sound wavefronts in the direction of lower sound speed, causing the sound rays to follow a curved path. The radius of curvature of the sound path is inversely proportional to the gradient. When the sun warms the Earth's surface, there is a negative temperature gradient in atmosphere. The speed of sound decreases with decreasing temperature, so this also creates a negative sound speed gradient. The sound wave front travels faster near the ground, so the sound is refracted upward, away from listeners on the ground, creating an acoustic shadow at some distance from the source. The opposite effect happens when the ground is covered with snow, or in the morning over water, when the sound speed gradient is positive. In this case, sound waves can be refracted from the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acoustics
Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology may be called an Acoustical engineering, acoustical engineer. The application of acoustics is present in almost all aspects of modern society with the most obvious being the audio and noise control industries. Hearing (sense), Hearing is one of the most crucial means of survival in the animal world and speech is one of the most distinctive characteristics of human development and culture. Accordingly, the science of acoustics spreads across many facets of human society—music, medicine, architecture, industrial production, warfare and more. Likewise, animal species such as songbirds and frogs use sound and hearing as a key element of mating rituals or for marking territories. Art, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Refraction
In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one transmission medium, medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomenon, but other waves such as sound waves and Wind wave, water waves also experience refraction. How much a wave is refracted is determined by the change in wave speed and the initial direction of wave propagation relative to the direction of change in speed. Optical Prism (optics), prisms and Lens (optics), lenses use refraction to redirect light, as does the human eye. The refractive index of materials varies with the wavelength of light,R. Paschotta, article ochromatic dispersion in th, accessed on 2014-09-08 and thus the angle of the refraction also varies correspondingly. This is called dispersion (optics), dispersion and causes prism (optics), prisms and rainbows to divide white light into its constituent spectral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wind Gradient
In common usage, wind gradient, more specifically wind speed gradient or wind velocity gradient, or alternatively shear wind, is the vertical component of the gradient of the mean horizontal wind speed in the lower atmosphere. It is the rate of increase of wind strength with unit increase in height above ground level. In metric units, it is often measured in units of meters per second of speed, per kilometer of height (m/s/km), which reduces inverse milliseconds (ms−1), a unit also used for shear rate. Simple explanation Surface friction forces the surface wind to slow and turn near the surface of the Earth, blowing directly towards the low pressure, when compared to the winds in the nearly frictionless flow well above the Earth's surface. This bottom layer, where surface friction slows the wind and changes the wind direction, is known as the planetary boundary layer. Daytime solar heating due to insolation thickens the boundary layer, as air warmed by contact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SOFAR Channel
The SOFAR channel (short for sound fixing and ranging channel), or deep sound channel (DSC), is a horizontal layer of water in the ocean at which depth the speed of sound is at its minimum. The SOFAR channel acts as a waveguide for sound, and low frequency sound waves within the channel may travel thousands of miles before dissipating. An example was reception of coded signals generated by the US Navy-chartered ocean surveillance vessel ''Cory Chouest'' off Heard Island, located in the southern Indian Ocean (between Africa, Australia and Antarctica), by hydrophones in portions of all five major ocean basins and as distant as the North Atlantic and North Pacific.Figure 1 of the referenc"The Heard Island Feasibility Test"(Munk) shows ray paths to receiving locations. Table 1 lists the sites with one being a Canadian research vessel with a towed array off Cape Cod. This phenomenon is an important factor in ocean surveillance. The deep sound channel was discovered and described ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ideal Gas
An ideal gas is a theoretical gas composed of many randomly moving point particles that are not subject to interparticle interactions. The ideal gas concept is useful because it obeys the ideal gas law, a simplified equation of state, and is amenable to analysis under statistical mechanics. The requirement of zero interaction can often be relaxed if, for example, the interaction is perfectly elastic or regarded as point-like collisions. Under various conditions of temperature and pressure, many real gases behave qualitatively like an ideal gas where the gas molecules (or atoms for monatomic gas) play the role of the ideal particles. Many gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, noble gases, some heavier gases like carbon dioxide and mixtures such as air, can be treated as ideal gases within reasonable tolerances over a considerable parameter range around standard temperature and pressure. Generally, a gas behaves more like an ideal gas at higher temperature and lower ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isothermal Atmosphere
An isothermal process is a type of thermodynamic process in which the temperature ''T'' of a system remains constant: Δ''T'' = 0. This typically occurs when a system is in contact with an outside thermal reservoir, and a change in the system occurs slowly enough to allow the system to be continuously adjusted to the temperature of the reservoir through heat exchange (see quasi-equilibrium). In contrast, an ''adiabatic process'' is where a system exchanges no heat with its surroundings (''Q'' = 0). Simply, we can say that in an isothermal process * T = \text * \Delta T = 0 * dT = 0 * For ideal gases only, internal energy \Delta U = 0 while in adiabatic processes: * Q = 0. Etymology The noun '' isotherm'' is derived from the Ancient Greek words (), meaning "equal", and (), meaning "heat". Examples Isothermal processes can occur in any kind of system that has some means of regulating the temperature, including highly structured machines, and even living cells. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seawater
Seawater, or sea water, is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has approximately of dissolved salts (predominantly sodium () and chloride () ions). The average density at the surface is 1.025 kg/L. Seawater is denser than both fresh water and pure water (density 1.0 kg/L at ) because the dissolved salts increase the mass by a larger proportion than the volume. The freezing point of seawater decreases as salt concentration increases. At typical salinity, it freezes at about . The coldest seawater still in the liquid state ever recorded was found in 2010, in a stream under an Antarctic glacier: the measured temperature was . Seawater pH is typically limited to a range between 7.5 and 8.4. However, there is no universally accepted reference pH-scale for seawater and the difference between measuremen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Underwater Acoustics
Underwater acoustics (also known as hydroacoustics) is the study of the propagation of sound in water and the interaction of the mechanical waves that constitute sound with the water, its contents and its boundaries. The water may be in the ocean, a lake, a river or a tank. Typical frequencies associated with underwater acoustics are between 10 Hz and 1 MHz. The propagation of sound in the ocean at frequencies lower than 10 Hz is usually not possible without penetrating deep into the seabed, whereas frequencies above 1 MHz are rarely used because they are absorbed very quickly. Hydroacoustics, using sonar technology, is most commonly used for monitoring of underwater physical and biological characteristics. Hydroacoustics can be used to detect the depth of a water body ( bathymetry), as well as the presence or absence, abundance, distribution, size, and behavior of underwater plants and animals. Hydroacoustic sensing involves " passive acoustics" (listening for soun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acoustic Shadow
An acoustic shadow or sound shadow is an area through which sound waves fail to propagate, due to topographical obstructions or disruption of the waves via phenomena such as wind currents, buildings, or sound barriers. Short-distance acoustic shadow A short-distance acoustic shadow occurs behind a building or a sound barrier. The sound from a source is shielded by the obstruction. Due to diffraction around the object, it will not be completely silent in the sound shadow. The amplitude of the sound can be reduced considerably, however, depending on the additional distance the sound has to travel between source and receiver. Long-distance acoustic shadow Anomalous sound propagation in the atmosphere can occur in certain conditions of wind, temperature and pressure. Such conditions enable sound to travel in refraction channels over long distances until returning to the Earth's surface, and it thus may not be heard in intervening locations. As one website refers to it, "an acoustic sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Temperature Gradient
A temperature gradient is a physical quantity that describes in which direction and at what rate the temperature changes the most rapidly around a particular location. The temperature spatial gradient is a vector quantity with Dimensional analysis, dimension of temperature difference per unit length. The International System of Units, SI Units of measurement, unit is kelvin per meter (K/m). Temperature gradients in the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere are important in the atmospheric sciences (meteorology, climatology and related fields). Mathematical description Assuming that the temperature ''T'' is an intensive quantity, i.e., a single-valued, Continuous function, continuous and Derivative, differentiable Function (mathematics), function of three-dimensional space (often called a scalar field), i.e., that :T=T(x,y,z) where ''x'', ''y'' and ''z'' are the Cartesian coordinate system, coordinates of the location of interest, then the temperature gradient is the vector (geometric) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speed Of Sound
The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elasticity (solid mechanics), elastic medium. More simply, the speed of sound is how fast vibrations travel. At , the speed of sound in air is about , or in or one mile in . It depends strongly on temperature as well as the medium through which a sound wave is propagating. At , the speed of sound in dry air (sea level 14.7 psi) is about . The speed of sound in an ideal gas depends only on its temperature and composition. The speed has a weak dependence on frequency and pressure in dry air, deviating slightly from ideal behavior. In colloquial speech, ''speed of sound'' refers to the speed of sound waves in Earth's atmosphere, air. However, the speed of sound varies from substance to substance: typically, sound travels most slowly in gases, faster in liquids, and fastest in solids. For example, while sound travels at in air, it travels at in water (almost 4.3 times a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penn State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855 as Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State was named the state's first land-grant university eight years later, in 1863. Its primary campus, known as Penn State University Park, is located in State College, Pennsylvania, State College and College Township, Pennsylvania, College Township. Penn State enrolls more than 89,000 students, of which more than 74,000 are undergraduates and more than 14,000 are postgraduates. In addition to its land-grant designation, the university is a National Sea Grant College Program, sea-grant, National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, space-grant, and one of only six Sun Grant Association, sun-grant universities. It is Carnegie Classification of Instit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
