E

L
the amount of energy reflected from the glass increases. The acoustic impedance Z of a material is (E)0.5, where is its density and E is the appropriate elastic modulus. The fraction of the energy of a plane wave, incident on a planar glass surface from air, that will be reflected is (Zair Zglass)2/(Zair + Zglass)2. Zair is linearly proportional to the pressure; even though it is much less than Zglass at atmospheric pressure, it falls further as the bell jar is evacuated, and it is this further reduction that causes the sound to disappear. The sound waves bounce off the glass, and very little energy is transmitted to the lecture theatre. This analysis contains many approximations. The glass surface and the sound waves are not planar, and re-entry of the sound waves into the air and internal reflections within the glass should be taken into account. However, there can be little doubt that the thrust of the analysis is correct. If your appetite for a physics challenge has been whetted by the above, try this, the last problem in the book. It takes about four minutes to boil a 60-g hen egg, to be acceptable to most people for eating. For how long would it be advisable to boil an ostrich egg weighing 1.5 kg? Hint: Assume that the eggs have the same chemical composition, the same shape, and the same thermal properties. No more data are required. The boiling time is not linearly proportional to the mass of the egg.

By Robert Fleming
Dont Believe Everything the Professor Tells You!
Recently I reviewed a manuscript on space charge detection in insulators, and the subject of acoustic impedance arose in the context of the transmission of acoustic waves through the samples. This reminded me of a surprising discussion on acoustic impedance and the transmission of sound waves through gases, which I read many years ago in an excellent little book called Thinking like a physicistPhysics problems for undergraduates, edited by Norman Thompson from the University of Bristol (Adam Hilger, Bristol, IOP Publishing Ltd., 1987).

Many of you have likely seen, perhaps in your first year at university, a demonstration that purports to show that sound waves cannot propagate in a vacuum. The equipment probably consisted of an evacuable glass bell jar containing an electric bell. The bell was clearly audible throughout the lecture theatre. The professor started the vacuum pump, probably the rotary vane type, and the sound of the bell rapidly decreased until it became almost inaudible. He or she then claimed to have shown that sound waves cannot propagate in a vacuum, explaining that a better pump would have eliminated the sound of the bell completely. It is undoubtedly true that sound waves cannot propagate in vacuum. Alas, this demonstration is spurious! The minimum pressure attainable in a bell jar sealed with an O-ring, using a rotary vane pump, would be of order 102 cm Hg, or about 13 Pa if you insist on SI units. At this pressure and at room temperature, the mean free path of air molecules is approximately 7 104 m (see any elementary physics text). If the bell frequency is of order 300 Hz, the corresponding wavelength is around 1.1 m. Because the mean free path of the air molecules is much smaller than the wavelength of the sound waves, the waves will propagate perfectly well through the air in the bell jar! So why does the sound intensity drop as the air pressure falls? The reason is that the acoustic impedance mismatch between the air and the glass of the bell jar increases as the pressure falls, and so

January/February Vol. 28, No. 1