Tree/forest Question...(was Re: Can God...)

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Timothy Litteral wrote:
> 
> MeB4:
> > | If a tree falls in a forrest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?
> 
> You:
> > I think I remember this one from High School Physics...
> >
> > Sound, by definition requires at least a "producer" and a "receiver".
> > So, if there was no "receiver" (including tape recorders!), then there
> was
> > no
> > "real" sound.
> >
> > I think that's how it went.
> 
> Me:
> Right, that is the common wrong answer.  If you stick to the layman's
> definition, a sound is the thing HEARD.  In the strictest sense of the word
> however the air is the receiver. ;-)  In the scientific realm the
> compressions and rarefactions occur whether anyone is their to "hear" the
> sound wave that is produced by the impact of the tree hitting the Earth.
> The leaves are shaken (hey, another receiver) and the bugs are moved and
> the like.  Sound waves mean sound was produced, and received in the air and
> energy was transfered. ;-)  That is why *I* say that it does indeed make a
> 'sound' (generates a wave which can be measured) but that it makes no noise
> (that which has NO physical quantity, only psychological).
> 
> I heard the answer you gave when I was in high school and tried to point
> out that if a tape recorder could 'receive' the sound and therefore fulfill
> the 'definition' then why not the air/trees/bugs?  The question then
> becomes that "If a tree falls in a vacuum does it make a sound" and of
> course the answer is no, whether anyone tries to 'listen/record' it or not.
> 
> Timothy (know this one too) Litteral

One needs to clarify what sound is, as opposed to energy. The tree falls
and energy is translated into compression waves in the ground and air.
Depending on the amount of energy imparted into the medium and the rate
of disapation the waves will travel a given distance. If there is
nothing there to translate this energy back to an audible input then
"sound" was not produced. The energy was produced, the potnetial was
there, but sound is not the energy wave in air but the responce of an
organism to this energy. So the answer is no sound was produced only
energy. 

Bill Clifton
woodrow_@geocities.com
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/1226/index.html