There are some optical techniques that make it possible to image the intense compressions are rarefactions associated with shock waves in air, but these are not the kinds of sounds we deal with in our everyday lives. The period of a sound wave is typically measured in milliseconds. For typical sound waves, the maximum displacement of the molecules in the air is only a hundred or a thousand times larger than the molecules themselves - and what technologies are there for tracking individual molecules anyway? The velocity and acceleration changes caused by a sound wave are equally hard to measure in the particles that make up the medium.ĭensity fluctuations are minuscule and short lived. Measuring displacement might as well be impossible. The density amplitude is the maximum change in density.The pressure amplitude is the maximum change in pressure (the maximum gauge pressure).Amplitudes associated with changes in bulk properties of arbitrarily small regions of the medium.The acceleration amplitude is the maximum change in acceleration.The velocity amplitude is the maximum change in velocity.The displacement amplitude is the maximum change in position.
Amplitudes associated with changes in kinematic quantities of the particles that make up the medium.The amplitude of a sound wave can be quantified in several ways, all of which are a measure of the maximum change in a quantity that occurs when the wave is propagating through some region of a medium.