Explore a visual and auditory guide to wave properties and waveforms to learn how every sound imaginable can be created by combining multiple vibrations of air.

View a collection of sound animations, which depict how a source of sound waves pushes against particles to carry energy away without matter being displaced.

Interacting sound waves can create regions where the pressure from each wave combines, allowing objects to levitate in place against gravity or be manipulated for touch-free construction.

Try out an online tone generator, which produces sounds of specific frequencies to help tune instruments, test your hearing, and generate beats by overlapping tones.

We hear because soundwaves are converted into electrochemical signals in our ears

This science teacher video systematically walks through the biology of the outer, middle, and inner ear. The explanation starts with the auricle, an external part that funnels sound through the auditory canal, and the tympanic membrane (the ear drum), which vibrates when sounds hit it. Beyond that, as the video details, is the eustachian tube, which is connected to the back of our throats and allows air to pass in and out to equalize ear pressure.

When struck, objects vibrate at unique rates called resonant frequencies, which makes tapping wood sound different from tapping metal, but providing objects with sound at their resonant frequency can cause them to shatter.

By igniting flammable gas in a tube filled with holes and playing music into it, the fire will take the shape of the sound waves, enabling the visualization of audio.

Listen to the 'sounds' of the universe with this sonification library, where astronomers have transformed certain astronomical data sets into audio for broader engagement.

Wave-particle duality—a simple overview

Our notion of reality is built on everyday experiences. But wave-particle duality is so strange that we are forced to re-examine our common conceptions. Wave-particle duality refers to the fundamental…

Visualize the components of fireworks

This article provides animated diagrams depicting how different parts of fireworks function. The elements work together through timed mechanisms to produce desired effects.

Visualizing a synaesthetic soundscape

Artist Michal Levy has chromesthesia, a subtype of synesthesia in which sounds and music trigger involuntary associations with and sensations of color. This condition gives Levy a unique artistic perspective and ability to interact with and interpret music. In this short animation, Levy tries to capture her audiovisual experience of 'Giant Steps," considered a landmark composition in jazz history by musician John Coltrane.

The three smallest bones in the human body—the malleus, incus, and stapes—amplify the vibrations of sound waves by almost 20 times to help enable hearing.

Light waves can interfere and cancel each other out

When light waves travel past one another, their peaks and valleys combine, just as overlapping ripples in water can combine to form a larger ripple. When the peak of a light wave meets the valley of another of the same wavelength and brightness, the waves combine to produce no light.

Probability waves govern particles like electrons in the quantum space

Just as waves are extended objects whose heights change across space, quantum waves dictate that the probability of an object existing in different locations across space varies. Like water waves, the probability waves can combine, changing the heights—and therefore probabilities—in different locations.

A sound's pitch will seem to change if the listener or the source moves toward or away from the other because motion changes the time it takes each successive sound wave to reach the listener.

Create flute, saxophone, trumpet, or violin reproductions of any 15-second piece of audio using machine learning.

Type out a tone and play it back with this fun game

Compose an original piece of music from your phone or desktop with this simple, super fun interface: Just start typing, discover the various sounds associated with each key or letter, and then press play. Go back, tweak, delete, and revise to your...

Variations in rapidly expanding gas and mechanical elements produce fireworks sounds

Chemical compounds designed to vibrate rapidly when ignited produce whistling, screeching sounds, while crackles and pops are created by small star pellets inside the firework, which explode one after another quickly. Fluttering and chirping sounds are produced by spinning elements that rotate rapidly as the firework ascends.

Arnold Schoenberg expanded the confines of music by abandoning traditional chords and embracing dissonance.

The four types of seismic waves—vibrations that carry energy generated by geological events, such as earthquakes—are categorized as body or surface waves.

Objects that move faster than the speed of sound—Mach 1—create shockwaves called sonic booms by building up and forcing sound waves to combine as they lag behind the object.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after explosion due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

If a source of music traveled past someone at twice the speed of sound, assuming sufficiently sensitive hearing and powerful equipment, they would hear the music backward.

View 3D renderings of atomic orbitals created with quantum mechanics

Scientists use the Schrödinger equation to determine how a system governed by a wavefunction—an equation that predicts the probability of certain outcomes—evolves with time. Computers can animate atomic structure and behavior by depicting the wavefunction as a fluid that guides a particle, like water moving a speck of dust.

Listen to samples of 'sounds' produced in the sun's interior, created from the sonification of internal vibrations detected by the Parker Solar Probe.

View the quantum mechanical depiction of electrons as waves around the atomic nucleus

Unlike Bohr's fixed paths, the quantum model describes electrons as exhibiting behavior resembling standing waves—waves that have fixed points at the end while vibrating, like a plucked guitar string. Rather than determining their exact positions, only the probabilities of electrons being in a specific region can be determined.

Listen to the pair of colliding black holes detected by LIGO

As ripples in spacetime, gravitational waves do not produce sound, which is the perception of specific vibrations in matter (e.g., vocal cords vibrating air molecules). The "chirp" of gravitational waves comes instead from converting the spacetime ripples into sound waves that the human ear can hear.

Computer systems create artificial voices by stitching together phonemes—individual sounds that make up speech, such as 't,' 'long a,' and 'k' to say 'take.'

The features that make our voices unique

Human voices are about as unique as fingerprints: similar instruments but with endless variations. We each produce sound in the same physiological way, but when we talk we’re dropping clues about who we are, what we do, and where we’re from.

A person's voice sounds different when breathing helium, sulfur hexafluoride, or gases other than air because the speed of sound varies with the properties of the material through which it travels.

The wave nature of matter can produce phenomena like negative time and retrocausality

Within quantum mechanics, matter simultaneously exists as both fixed particles and extended waves, allowing it to emerge across barriers—just as sound travels through walls—before it fully enters the obstacle. The resulting measurements can show that particles spent negative time within a barrier, with the future occurring before the past.

Wave tanks can be used to create and study the impacts of tsunamis by building tension in an underwater object before allowing it to slip and rapidly displace water.

50 years of research has focused on unraveling the relationship between music and frisson

One insight reveals that musical passages with surprising volume changes or unexpected harmonies and beauty are more likely to trigger frisson, perhaps because they upend listeners' expectations.

Ultrasound machines emit and receive high-frequency sound waves to construct images of the body's interior, with differences in the penetrating power of different frequencies allowing medical professionals to identify different structures.

Thunder occurs when fast-flowing electricity heats and pressurizes air, causing it to expand and produce a shockwave at each point along the bolt at multiple frequencies.

How radio works

Antennae tune a radio to a particular frequency (determined by the listener on their radio's dial) while tuning out all the other stations being broadcast. AM, short for amplitude modulation, and FM, short for frequency modulation, decode audio signals differently, leading to differences in sound quality and the distance a station can travel.

Neural rhythms shape how we move, focus, remember, and interact with the world

Millions of neurons in the brain produce rhythmic electrical signals, or brain waves, that guide physical movement and help form and store memories. Researchers also use these rhythms to create brain-computer interfaces, letting people control devices using only their thoughts.

The bullwhip was the first human-made object to break the sound barrier, producing a small sonic boom heard as a crack when flicked quickly.

Explore interactive simulations of strange attractors, the graphs that help visualize chaos

Although simple, linear equations reach an explicit value for a given input, such as *f(x) \= x* + 1 equaling 4 when *x* equals 3, some chaotic, nonlinear systems tend to evolve towards multiple values simultaneously. These simulations allow users to observe the unusual mathematical artifacts created by systems as their outputs evolve toward these distinct values.

Professional vocalists explain the mechanics of singing

Ever wonder how your favorite singer hits those high notes? Have you been amazed at someone bringing down the house at karaoke? The secret behind singing is that it's more technical than most realize. In this video, a handful of professional vocalists break down the basics to demonstrate how you can develop a more musical voice.

Sonar, or sound navigation and ranging, uses reflected sound waves to map and detect seafloor features, marine organisms, and other obstacles.

Some sounds that have been shown to affect mood and noise have been given color names, such as brown, pink, and green noise, corresponding their frequencies to those of light.

AI tools that generate images, audio, video, and 3D models rely on diffusion models, which begin with random data, such as visual noise, and gradually refine it into the requested media.

The fast Fourier transform breaks down wave signals into discrete components

The algorithm was initially discovered by German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1805, but his notes were not found until after his death. Today, FFTs form the basis for most compression software in media and are essential to technologies such as radar, sonar, and telecommunications.

The ingredients that make up severe weather

A seven-minute video illustrating how a storm is made. These factors—moisture, instability, lift, and shear—are explained through a series of data sets and creative, descriptive diagrams.

Quantum mechanics explains how particles behave like both matter and waves

In the quantum world, particles such as electrons are “quantized,” meaning they can only hold specific values of energy or momentum. These particles also behave like waves, with their wave function predicting where they might be found at any moment as probability clouds called orbitals.

Light has been modeled as a wave and a stream of particles throughout history

Isaac Newton first identified white light as composed of a spectrum of colors, which he believed consisted of particles of different hues. Various light phenomena, including refraction, led Christiaan Huygens to develop an alternative wave model. Quantum mechanics validated both models through the concept of wave-particle duality.

Why patterns in art are so pleasing

Repeated visual cues like shapes or lines derive from the brain's innate compulsion to identify faces, places, bodies, and more. With repeated shapes, the brain seeks out resolution to the subtle variations between them. See examples in art and music.

Researchers identify a hidden instability pattern in simple ocean wave models

Stokes waves—a solution to the mathematics of water waves—were once assumed to be stable. Italian mathematicians have proven disturbances cause these waves to collapse and such collapses follow an infinite repeating pattern. To complete the proof, the team offered a $100 donation to solicit online help.

Just as light bends at different angles as it travels through different materials, seismic waves move in different directions through Earth's interior, revealing the presence of layers with varying properties.

Stonehenge may have functioned as an echo chamber designed to keep ceremonies secret from outsiders.

Acoustics researcher Trevor Cox discovered that Stonehenge acts like a concert hall, reflecting and amplifying sound. This video shows Cox demonstrating the effect using a scale model inside a soundproof studio.