Analog vs. Digital Recordings | Sampling and more

Difference Between Analog And Digital Signal by Byjus

Have you ever seen a big, black record, or  watched a movie at a drive-in movie theater where they use film rolls or maybe you remember learning how to read analog clocks? These are all examples of analog technologies. Analog technologies and recordings are when a device uses dials, arms or other measurements to create an analogy of the actual thing. If you measure a paperclip, the part of the ruler that is the same size as the paperclip of an analogy of the paperclip itself. On a clock with hands, the hands of the clock is an analogy of time passing. Then there is digital technologies. These are things like computers and cell phones. Instead of taking things and making analogies of them, digital technologies take the data and convert it into numbers that can be saved in the cloud. This is called sampling. Sampling is when you convert analog data into digital data and the other way around. Many people prefer digital recordings because they are easier and faster to use. They also take up less space. But their are some downsides. No matter how frequent sampling is, you will never get the whole story. This means that you will always be missing part of the picture. But this is something that many people sacrifice in order to continue to use digital technologies.

S&EP
SP3: Conducting Investigations

We looked at the differences between analog and digital recordings and found the pros and cons of each. We converted graphs using sampling and looked at different stories at different levels of sampling and through that found which technology we liked better. I personally still like digital data better than analog because though it leaves out part of the picture, you still have much easier access to it. No matter what level of sampling you use, you will still be missing pieces of information but I am willing to give this up for an easier and faster way to find things out.

XCC
XCC: Scale Proportion and quantity

Scale, proportion and quantity are very important when using analog and digital recordings. In analog technologies and recordings, the scale has to be perfect and the proportion can't be off. If it is, you can mess up the whole of the measurement. Take a watch for example. if you misjudge where the hand is pointing, you can get the time wrong. Quantity is also important when you are looking at sampling. Quantity is part of frequency and the frequency at which sampling is performed is important when trying to get almost an exact copy of the data you are trying to convert.

Thumb Drum | Multi use instrument

Interaction Version

Have you ever tried to make a homemade instrument? If you have, have you tried to play a song on it? I know I have. Our instrument is called the thumb drum. A device where you can pluck bobby pins, tap a beat and shake out a rhythm. This was all part of a sound waves unit. Sound waves act and move differently depending on the type of vibration. This is seen through the thumb drum as the different parts of the device make different noises. Playing many different notes, the Thumb Drum is a great musical instrument that you can make using basic at home materials. This instrument was part of a great project in which you made an instrument, played the different notes and studied the different soundwaves and then played a song on the instrument. We found that the appearance of the wave changes when the pitch changes because the waves become closer together when the pitch is higher and the opposite happens when the pitch is lower, we also found that the relationship between frequency and pitch is that the higher the frequency, the higher the pitch of the note, the lower that the frequency is the lower than the pitch of the note is. Overall, this has taught me yet another way that we use soundwaves in our life.

Backwards-Looking

I knew many things about sound waves before I started this project. I had worked on this unit for a few weeks before we started the project and was able to know how soundwaves worked. I didn't know much about how to make an instrument though. It was hard to build the instrument because I didn't have many musical experiences and didn't quite understand the making of wind instruments. In the end, I was able to figure out how to make wind instruments, how instruments worked and a lot more about soundwaves than I had known coming into the project.

Inwards-Looking

What satisfies me most about this project is that I was able to build a working and good looking instrument. This was very fun to do and I especially enjoyed being able to make up an instrument and what it could do. I also had fun making the name, Thumb Drum, because I was able to be very creative and it was an overall fun thing to do. I also had lots of fun and am overly satisfied with the way it looks. It is a light purple that is sort of Ambre and the writing of the instrument is good. I think something else I enjoyed was being able to experiment with the sounds and songs as we learned how to play them on our instrument. This was an amazing experience and I loved having the satisfaction of making my very own inventive instrument.

Outwards-Looking

In this project, my group had the same criteria and constraints as everyone else, but we made the project our own. We experimented with making many different instruments instead of just going with one original design. We also made our instrument a few different types of things that are all related to percussion instead of doing a guitar or wind instrument which is what lots of groups ended up doing. I think that we did our instrument different than others, but when it came to doing the sound waves, our results were quite similar, to those of other groups.

Forwards-Looking

One thing I would like to improve upon is time management and not trying to do too much. In our original brainstorm, we had very ambitious designs. We wanted to do a complicated wind instrument and make it look like different animals and play all sorts of different songs. This backfired on us and we spent a whole week of the project trying to get the wind instrument to work. We learned a lot but ended up wasting a lot of clay and time. If I had the chance to try this over again, I would want to save more time and make something that is not too ambitious for what we had to work with.

Echos, Amplitude and the Speed of Sound

Have you ever gone in a tunnel, spoken and then heard your voice echo? Have you ever wondered why this happens? Echos happen when sound hits a solid barrier that doesn't allow sound to go through it. This means that the sound has nowhere to go but back. This causes the sound to bounce around and causes an echo. But this all depends on how sound moves. Sound moves from molecule to molecule, it means that it vibrates the molecule, which passes the vibration on to the next molecule passing on sound. But what makes sound super loud. If an object or sound moves really, really fast, the object can break a sound barrier, this is a very loud noise that you can hear when you go to air shows and the jets fly overhead at very high speeds. The loudness of a sound is called amplitude, a louder sound has a higher amplitude. Sound is manipulated in many different ways and is very interesting the deeper that you dig into it.

S&EP

SP2:Using Models

We modeled how sound works when we made our own instruments. These instruments have to be able to play a scale of eight notes and demonstrate how sound works. One of these demonstrations that we saw when making our instruments is the air hole in the bottom of most wind instruments. This has 3 sides that are at a 90 degree angle, and one that is at a 45 degree angle. This splits the sound to keep half in and half out. This allows the sound to whistle through the other holes.

XCC

XCC: Scale, proportions and quantity

Instruments rely a lot on the scale and proportions of the instruments. This is important because if an instrument was not proportional or to scale, it could make an unexpected sound or not play a sound at all. In a wind instrument, the air holes have to be the right size or too little, or too much air will escape.

Sound Vs. Light | Mechanical and Electromagnetic Waves and the Electromagnetic Spectrum

16x24 Poster; Electromagnetic Spectrum by Welsh Printing

Have you ever heard the saying, "faster than the speed of light"? Have you ever wondered why sound can travel so fast? Faster than sound? This is because light is an electromagnetic wave. This means that it can travel through a vacuum, or empty space. This means that it does not have to wait for a molecule to be able to move. But why can't sound move that fast? This is because sound is a Mechanical wave, Longitudinal to be exact. Sound waves, being mechanical waves, have to travel through a medium, or matter. This means that vibrations have to be sent from particle to particle, costing time. Thus why it can move faster through solids than liquids and gasses. This is because in a solid, the molecules are very close together, this means that sound waves don't have to wait a very long time to move from molecule to molecule, but in air, sometimes it can take a while to find another molecule to move onto and travel through, ergo, sound travels fastest through solids and denser mediums. But what does this have to do with other types of waves. There are two main families of waves, electromagnetic waves and mechanical waves. Mechanical waves are waves that need a medium to travel through. There are many different types of mechanical waves that include transverse waves, longitudinal waves and even oceanic wave. They also include seismic waves or earthquakes. Then there are Electromagnetic waves. These waves are like light rays and don't need to travel through a medium, meaning that they can travel through a vacuum or space.  In the electromagnetic waves, there is the electromagnetic spectrum, this is the spectrum of waves of the order of radiation The order is, radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet light, x-ray, and then gamma rays.

S&EP
SP2: Using models

We used models to see just how sound travels differently in different objects. We also used models to show the different types of waves and how they are different and can be manipulated. This helped because it showed the way that different waves acted and how that changed the outcome of the wave such as the amplitude, wavelength and wave power. It also helped to model what sound travels fastest through because that gave us a better understanding of why sound travels fastest through what it travels fastest through. This is just another example of how models can help scientist to better understand what they are doing and why and how it works.

XCC
XCC: Energy and Matter

Energy and matter are a very important part of telling different waves from each other. Matter can help to separate the two main types of waves, electromagnetic and mechanical. This can help us to differentiate the two waves because mechanical waves need a medium or matter to be able to travel, whereas electromagnetic doesn't. Energy comes into play because waves have different ways to passing on energy. Some waves, like transversal waves, travel perpendicular to energy, where others, such as longitudinal waves, travel parallel to energy. Each wave also carries different amounts of energy. High frequency waves carry more energy than lower frequency waves. These can help us to separate different types of waves from one another and calculate how to find their wave speed and wave power.

Hearing Loss | How loud music affects your ears

The Anatomy of the Ear by Bruce Blaus

Many people listen to music daily, maybe it is country, rock or pop. But did you know, that having your music on very loud settings might be fun, but can ruin your ability to listen to music for the rest of your life. Before we dive into understanding hearing loss, lets understand how you can hear. Sound travels in waves, but to hear them, you have to transfer them into vibrations. First the sound waves travel down the ear canal and reach the eardrum. The eardrum then turns the sound waves into vibrations that travel down the Hammer, to the Anvil and then to the Stirrup. Fun fact, the stirrup is the smallest bone in your body. Then the stirrup sends the vibrations into the Cochlea which is full of liquid. This liquid is sent into movement in waves. This then reaches the hair cells. The hair cells are tiny cells that look like hair, thus, the name hair cells. Each type of hair cell has a different purpose. They each can recognize a different frequency of sound. The small and thick hairs recognize the higher frequency sounds and the thinner and more flexible hairs can recognize the lower frequency. When a sound reaches them they start to move. If the sound is quieter then they move less and if the sound is louder they shake around and move crazily. But if a sound is too loud, they can cause the hair cells to lose the tip of the cell. This causes ringing in the ear. This is because the hair cells leak electric impulses. This is a problem because the electric impulses are sent by the hair cells to the brain to tell it when it is hearing noise and of what frequency, but if it leaks the electric impulses, then the brain gets confused as to what is noise and what is not. Therefore, you can hear a ringing in the ear. This is where hearing loss comes into play. Whereas most of the time, the tips of the hair cells will grow back in a day or two, if you listen to loud noises to often, they won't grow back. Making it harder and harder to hear.

Listening to loud music can add to the growth and beginning of hearing loss because of the damage it causes to the hair cells. These hair cells eventually get so damaged that they don't work as well as they used to. This causes noises to become more muffled. This is because the loud music makes the hair cells lose their tips, then when you come back and listen to it the next day, it damages it more, and more and more until the hair cells can't recover anymore and become useless, this means they can no longer send messages to your brain. So you don't hear parts of the word and noises because quieter because your brain isn't hearing as much, because there are not as many hair cells sending the message. It gets quieter and quieter until you can't hear. So next time you plug in your beats or put on your airpods, take a moment to look at the volume, it may save you some hearing when you are older.