Why does the pitch of an airplane sound like it goes from high to low when it flies overhead?
In: Physics
Sound is a mechanical wave, just like those in the water. As you know when you drop a stone to a standing water, waves are going in every direction at the same speed. But what if you would put a piece of plastic and drag it on the water? It also makes waves but ones in front are closer together than those in the back, same happens with sound when a plane travels across air, the diffrence is you cant SEE sound but you can hear it. Those changes came exactly from combining “normal” sound with speed of a plane and make waves closer or farther apart from one another and you hear it as a change in pitch.
That distortion is called Doppler Effect. By typing it in google you will find a lot of great resources about it because it’s really fun physics thing to show general public.
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