Posted by Neil MacQuarrie on April 10, 2001 at 00:29:20:
In Reply to: A440 ? posted by TS. (the student). on April 09, 2001 at 15:15:04:
sound travels in waves. Those waves would look, if we could see them, like a rope if you took and end and shook it from left to right. A wave travels through the rope. If you try this you will notice that the wave in the rope makes a bump (node) both to the right and to the left. Each group of 2 nodes in the rope (one to the right and on to the left) is called a cycle. If you could shake the rope fast enough to create 10 cycles in the space of one second, then you would be producing a wave with a FREQUENCY of 10 cycles per second. The name for cycles per second is Hertz. 10 cycles per second = 10 Hertz (Hz) The frequency of the A on the tuner is 440Hz.
Think of a pitch, for example A440Hz, as making the air vibrate in the same manner as the rope, except the wave is much smaller (440 cycles per second.) The higher the pitch, the higher the frequency. For example, an octave above A440 is A880, and octave below, A220.
Hope that helped.
Neil