----- Original Message -----From: Ben MaySent: Friday, January 03, 2003 1:15 AMSubject: Re: [Orb] new orb perspective
It has mostly to do with the behavior of a massless wave. So, a sound wave as it moves through the air is really just a disruption of the normal air-interaction. It's essentially a force, and it behaves a lot that way. Think of how, when you hit a wall, in order to stop you, the wall exerts an equal force back at you (otherwise you would go through! :P). But walls and (presumably) you both have mass, whereas air more or less doesn't. At least, from the perspective of the wave, the air molecules essentially have no mass. Its almost like two waves in the ocean. If you have two waves, with equal mass moving at one another at the same speed, they will cancel in the middle. So sound waves do the same thing. Check out:
http://www.atcsd.com/pdf/HSSQ&AVerC.pdf