How do sounds cancel each other out?
In: Physics
Sound is a compression wave in the air. At the simplest scale the air pushes toward you and then away from you. When you have more than one sound source, the sound waves can interact. If one source causes the air to move toward you and the other causes the air to move away from you, the two sounds cancel out and you hear nothing.
Most sounds are complex, and to cancel them you need some sophisticated circuit as a source, like noise cancelling headphones.
Sounds are made of waves, basically areas of slightly higher or lower air pressure that are moving from a source to your ears.
If two waves interact in such a way that the high pressure areas of one wave exactly meets the low pressure area of the other wave, then they average out to just be whatever the ambient air pressure is, which means there’s no sound
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