Making Waves

Genesis 3:8

“And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.”

Many people remember their high school physics teachers doing experiments with slinky coils, but few remember what the point of the experiments was! They simply remember the teacher using the long coiled spring to make waves.

The waves occur because a motion is made which causes a force in the opposite direction. So, if the spring is forced to move to the right, a force is produced by that spring towards the left. This slows the motion down and eventually moves the spring in the opposite direction until it passes the midpoint and produces a force the other way.

Air is also springy. There are forces between the molecules of the gases in the air. We know that if air is compressed, it wants to decompress itself. That is the reason that compressed air can be used as a means of transferring energy. When a sound is made, what actually happens is that a bit of the air is compressed and then expands again. As it expands, it compresses the next bit of air, which then expands. This compresses the next bit of air – and so on, until the compressions hit the eardrum in your ear. So, sound is transmitted by waves of compressions of air. God has designed it so that our ears can detect these compressions and expansions with a very sensitive piece of skin, and clever microphone and amplifier system. In fact, this mechanism is so clever that it had to have been designed, rather than appearing by chance.

Prayer:  Thank You, Lord, for the way that our hearing system works in a way that was clearly designed for our benefit. Amen.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: Encyclopaedia Britannica, < https://www.britannica.com/science/sound-physics >, accessed 12/31/2018. Image: Adobe Stock Images, licensed to author.

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