You’re picking up good vibrations!
Through speakers, we can hear our favorite bands play songs for us right in our homes. Of course we’re not hearing them live, but we are hearing almost perfect copies of the sound they made.
It’s important to know that sound is actually vibrations in the air. Vibrations are a type of energy that we can feel. Our ears pick up these vibrations, and our brains explain them to us as sound. Our music players, our computers and our televisions send electronic signals to speakers. Those signals tell the speakers how to recreate the original vibrations of the sound that was recorded. It’s like the speakers are doing a really good impression!
You might be surprised how speakers are able to make these vibrations. Many use magnets! Electricity sent through the wires in the speakers can either make the magnets pull toward each other, or it can make them push away from each other. That can happen very quickly and very fast! One of the magnets in a speaker is attached to a cone, and as it’s pushed and pulled, the cone hits the air and makes vibrations. This makes the sound we hear!