whats the maximum Hz that a soundwave can be increased to?

Question

take A note @ 440HZ and double its freq. ya get its octave. but where does this series physically stop? mathematically this doubling will occur indefinalty. but what happens to the physical soundwave when the same fundamental freq(our A 440) is increased to the Khz Mhz Ghz range? Does it stay a soundwave? or is there a max freq of soundwaves?

why the two thumbs down? its a perfectly legit question. if he finds it "interesting" so what?

thanks Alexander for the good answer, but heres what im getting at if sound waves within the range of human hearing can be divided into the following ratios 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, 5:4, 5:3, 6:5, 8:5, 9:8 and 16:15 and develop the audible music intervals then one should easily apply these ratios to any freq range or other types of waves such as the Debye freqs with in the crystal. These ratios apply to light, sound and water waves.

Answer 1

Sound waves, or more properly acoustical waves, propagate through material media at rates determined by the medium itself. If the frequency of the wave approaches the natural frequency of the atoms in the material then the wave sloshes around and quickly dies, the molecules just can't respond fast enough. The acoustic wave then becomes lost as heat.

Hearing stops somewhere around 20kHz for most people, that's the limitation of the human eardrum. Other animals have higher range of hearing, mainly because their eardrums are smaller and so have higher resonance frequencies.

Answer 2

A soundwave is a pressure wave in a fluid or gaseous medium or a transverse vibrational wave in a solid medium. As such, the frequency limitation is defined by the medium: how fast can you set up a vibration within the defined medium. Soundwaves can be generated that are much higher than the kilohertz range. At this range (beyond human hearing which is limited to 35 - 40 KHz in the best cases), the sound is called ultrasound. Ultrasound waves in the MHz range are used for medical imaging.

Answer 3

Yes, if you take a sound wave and double the frequency an infinite number of times, it is still a sound wave, BUT YOU WILL STOP BEING ABE TO HEAR IT at some point. Ever heard of the "DOG" whistle, it produces a very high frequency tome that humans can't hear.
Same with light, we can only see a part of the "electromagnetic" spectrum
Hope it helps

Answer 4

Once you get beyond the human audible range, you would call it ultrasound, but technically it still is sound. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters are commonly used well into the GHz range.

Answer 5

The phonon (sound) spectrum in a solid is discrete. The highest frequency corresponds to a wavelength of twice the atomic spacing.

Answer 6

Yes, there is maximum frequency of sound in each substance. For crystals maximum frequency is called
Debye frequency, typically about 1-10TeraHz.

In air maximum frequency is limited by mean time between collisions of molecules about 100 MHz

Answer 7

The image “http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Ultrasound_range_diagram.png” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Answer 8

interesting.