Why is there a common belief that Sound travels upwards?
Why is there a common belief that Sound travels upwards?
Or that sound travels across water? I assume it's because usually there are blockages, tree/buildings horizontally, while in high-rises and boats there are nothing blocking sounds
Edit. The myth here is that sound travels across water and upwards more than any other direction. Apologies if it was not worded well
Why wouldn't sound travel across water? Why wouldn't sound travel upwards as well as horizontally?
I was taught sound travels in all directions from it's source. Does that not include upward?
Because sound does travel up? Is this a serious question? Assuming it is, you can prove this yourself with a simple experiment. Go stand on your roof. Now, drop something onto the ground below you, preferably something breakable, and drop it onto something it will break against like concrete (not necessary, just helpful).
Did you hear it hit the ground? Congratulations the sound traveled upward to your eardrum, and you've discovered sound does in fact travel upward. In fact it travels in all directions because sound is just air molecules moving around, which is why there is no sound in space (where there is no air).
The common thing I've heard is that it travels upwards more than horizontally
I've never heard this in my life. Are you sure you're not missing a key piece of the equation? For example, you might hear sounds more easily at a high elevation (like several floors up a high rise) than at ground level? Or that sound travels further over a body of water than it does over other types of media? Because both of those are true (in certain circumstances), but they're a function of the physics of air molecules.
If the air over the water is cool, and it often is, sound travels better through the dense cool air. And you're right that there's no obstacles or terrain, too.
They’re both correct
I'm not sure where you're running into this myth, I've never heard of it before.
That being said, I would hazard that reflection is the idea behind it. Any sound source is going to bounce off of things. Since there's ground and water pretty much everywhere, or isn't a stretch to think that someone buying info the idea you've presented might think that's why it's going up more than any other direction.
Now, the water thing isn't entirely untrue. There aren't usually obstacles dampening sound on bodies of water, so it kinda does end up traveling well, despite the water itself not being the reason.
Sound travels as a wave in the form of a sphere from where it was created through a medium. It can travel through most mediums with varying degrees of difficulty. Water being one of the best mediums through which sound can travel. It cannot, however, travel in a vacuum. That's why "in space, no one can hear you scream."
Sound is a wave, a vibration, from a source. That wave “vibrates” through a medium like air, brick, water or glass and enters you ear canal vibrates your ear drum and you hear it as sound. The density of the material it travels through, the distance from the source and the amount of energy of the sound affect the quality of what you hear. It is omnidirectional from the source, where there are less dense objects in the way is the direction you will hear the best. Reason why you can hear airplanes thousands of feet away: theres very little in the way to block or disturb the energetic waves propagated from turbines.
I remember learning about the still water phenomenon in a 1980s edition of The Guiness Book of World Records.