I get constructive and deconstructive, but those are usually in the context of being the same frequency and just being out of phase. I’m talking like…you and your bud having a conversation in a restaurant, with music playing, convos around you, sound of wait staff, etc. If a waiter drops a plate, how does that sound transit through at that higher, unique frequency through all the other noise so that all can hear it?
Thank you for your time!
In: Physics
There are great answers in this thread already, but I will point out that sounds definitely do interfere constructively and destructively in the world at large. It’s just that complete and total destructive interference is basically impossible in practice. The necessary precision in terms of wavelength, amplitude, and phase in 3D space is too fine to expect to ever happen naturally. Even if they did, unless the souund sources are coming from the same exact direction, they aren’t going to produce one static state of interference from your perspective. In 3d, pressure waves expand out in a sphere. When these spheres overlap, you get a complex interference pattern with areas of constructive and destructive interference that ripple outwards and change over time. So, from your perspective, it would kind of sound like a phaser effect.
But even if the sources were in a direct straight line and spaced perfectly apart to be opposite in phase and produced the exact same frequency sound and had relative amplitudes to completely interfere when accounting for the distance between them, you still need to consider that you have 2 ears that exist separately in space. Even if one of them was positioned perfectly, the other will be out of alignment and will experience an interference pattern rather than total interference. Alone, this might sound weird, but amongst the cacophony of public spaces, you probably wouldn’t even notice.
Latest Answers