How does a vibrating object make a sound?

Answer 1

Sound waves are created by vibrations. When objects are dropped, slid, rubbed, or moved in any way when fiction is applied, they vibrate. Some vibrations are too weak to hear as sound waves, others are too high pitched for our auditory processing.

Answer 2

Sound is basically vibrations at certain frequencies. Sound can travel through different mediums such as air. Lets look at a simple example of a bell: when you hit the bell it vibrates. The vibrations then cause the air around the bell to vibrate. These vibrations reach your ear drum (causing it to vibrate too) - And viola you hear a sound!

Answer 3

Sound can travel in gas, liquids and solids, but this answer will address only sound in air since the other situations are similar.

In air, vibrations of physical objects, like the human vocal cords or a drum, cause air next to the object to become compressed and rarefied as the object vibrates. When a region of air is compressed, it pushes outward and air movement occurs to nearby regions. When a region of air is rarefied, movement develops from the nearby regions towards the less dense regions. When an object vibrates, the compression and rarefaction process repeats with regularity and the regions of air movement develop regularity and those region propagate away from the vibration source.

An essential element explaining in the propagation of sound is the inertia of the regions of air moving as a result of the increases and decreases in density. It is easiest to visualize and describe when thinking of sound waves as plane waves with the regions of compression and rarefaction being flat sheets. As a region of compression expands, the mass in that region has inertia so the molecules want to continue until the gas meets an opposing force. As a region expands it becomes rarefied but it then meets with another expanding region and together they become more dense and there is enough push back to overcome the inertia and create a new dense (compressed) region. Then the process repeats.

The propagation of compressed and rarefied regions of air is sound.

This description provides some qualitative aspects of the process, but there are the equations which quantify all of this.

Answer 4

By vibarting an object, it would produce sound waves.