PHASING AND TIME DELAYS
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Answer |
In 1693, the Dutch
astronomer Christiaan Huygens, standing at the foot of a
staircase at the French castle at Chantilly de la Cour,
while sipping a lovely merlot, noticed that the sound
from a nearby fountain produced a certain pitch. He
assumed (correctly) that the wavelength of the pitch he
heard corresponded to the depth of one stair tread, and
that the pitch was caused by periodic reflections of the
sound against the steps of the staircase (which of
course were all evenly spaced, and likely made of
marble). We don’t know what pitch he heard, but if the tread on this grand outdoor staircase was about 2.5 feet, the pitch would have been around A 440 Hz. Oh and yes, we just made up the bit about the merlot. |