Discover how vibrations create sound and how our ears detect it.
Sound is a form of energy caused by vibrations. When an object vibrates โ like a guitar string being plucked or a drum being hit โ it makes the particles around it vibrate too, passing the vibration along as a sound wave. These waves travel through the air until they reach our ears, where the vibrations are detected and sent to our brain as sound. Sound can travel through solids, liquids and gases, but it cannot travel through a vacuum (empty space) โ which is why there is no sound in outer space! The pitch of a sound tells us how high or low it is. Tighter or shorter strings produce higher pitches; longer or looser ones produce lower pitches. Volume tells us how loud or quiet a sound is, and sound gets quieter the further it travels from its source.