sound wave
nounDefinition of sound wave
2
sound waves plural
: longitudinal pressure waves in any material medium regardless of whether they constitute audible sound
earthquake waves and ultrasonic waves are sometimes called sound waves
Examples of sound wave in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
In August 2016 and May 2017, scientists bounced sound waves off the glacier front to create images of the underwater part of the glacier. — Anchorage Daily News, "Extreme melting occurs where ocean meets glacier near Petersburg," 27 July 2019 So Access Explorer is considering other indoor positioning methods, including using sound waves to send positioning data. — Susan Crawford, WIRED, "The Challenge of Helping Blind People Navigate Indoors," 25 June 2019 Instead, Tesla relies on radar, along with eight cameras and ultrasonic sensors — which use sound waves — to send information to its vehicles’ computers. — Levi Sumagaysay, The Mercury News, "Elon Musk calls lidar ‘stupid,’ but most self-driving cars use it. Who’s right?," 17 June 2019 William and Lawrence Bragg, a father and son, switched from X-ray research to using sound waves to locate enemy positions from the boom of their cannons. — The Economist, "How Einstein and Eddington stood against jingoism," 7 June 2019 Meanwhile, helioseismology, the competing, indirect approach for inferring metallicity based on the way sound waves of different frequencies propagate through the sun’s interior, still said 1.8 percent. — Quanta Magazine, "What Is the Sun Made Of and When Will It Die?," 5 July 2018 This is made possible when a sound (in this case, the voice) matches the resonant frequency of the glass and then increases it until the glass vibrates hard enough (from the sound waves the voice is creating) to crack and break. — Daisy Hernandez, Popular Mechanics, "Wait, Did Mariah Carey Really Remove a Bottle Cap With Just Her Voice?," 11 July 2019 That’s the startling premise of a recent study by researchers at Cambridge University and Sweden’s Linköping University who were able to glean passwords by deciphering the sound waves generated by fingers tapping on smartphone touch screens. — Hamza Shaban, The Denver Post, "Hackers may glean your password by listening to how you type on your phone," 7 July 2019 That’s the startling premise of a recent study by researchers at Cambridge University and Sweden’s Linköping University, who were able to glean passwords by deciphering the sound waves generated by fingers tapping on smartphone touch screens. — Hamza Shaban, Washington Post, "Listen for the log-in: Hackers may glean your password by listening to how you type on your phone," 6 June 2019These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'sound wave.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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