I am sitting in my apartment with my windows open and a car drove by and as it did, the music got distorted the further away to got. I’ve noticed this too while walking to class and someone is blasting music in their car.
In: Physics
Basically the frequency at which the sound waves are reaching your ears is increasing or decreasing. As a vehicle moves towards you, the speed of sound stays the same, yet the vehicle is getting closer to you so the sound has less distance to travel. As it passes you and goes further away, so too the sound waves have further to travel to get back to you as the vehicle gets further. Think of it like walking into an ocean from the beach. If you were to walk straight into the waves, the frequency they hit you with would increase the faster you walked. When you turn around to go back to the beach, the waves would take longer to hit you since you are walking away from them.
It’s called the Doppler Effect.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect
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