How do microphones work? I just do not get it.
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The sounds we hear are vibrations of air molecules. The pitch of those sounds relates to the frequency of those vibrations. Microphones have a lightweight sheet in them that easily starts to vibrate with the vibrations in the air. The sheet is attached to a magnet, (or a coil of wire) which also starts to vibrate.
Around this magnet, there’s a really long coil of very thin wire. Whenever a magnet moves inside a coil of wire, (or a coil moves around a magnet) an electric current is induced into that wire. In a microphone, that current is very small, so the wire is connected to an amplifier which reads the current and makes it stronger while keeping its frequency untouched.
We can then take this current and feed it to a speaker or a recording device.
Fun fact, speakers are reverse microphones. Sound waves vibrate a magnet in a microphone which generates a current. A current vibrates a magnet in a speaker which generates sound waves.
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