Page:Young - Outlines of experiments and inquiries respecting sound and light (1800).djvu/19

 with the same velocity with which they arrived at that obstacle. When the walls of a passage, or of an unfurnished room, are smooth and perfectly parallel, any explosion, or a stamping with the foot, communicates an impression to the air, which is reflected from one wall to the other, and from the second again towards the ear, nearly in the same direction with the primitive impulse: this takes place as frequently in a second, as double the breadth of the passage is contained in 1130 feet; and the ear receives a perception of a musical sound, thus determined in its pitch by the breadth of the passage. On making the experiment, the result will be found accurately to agree with this explanation. If the sound is predetermined, and the frequency of vibrations such as that each pulse, when doubly reflected, may coincide with the subsequent pulse proceeding directly from the sounding body, the intensity of the sound will be much increased by the reflection; and also, in a less degree, if the reflected pulse coincides with the next but one, the next but two, or more, of the direct pulses. The appropriate notes of a room may readily be discovered by singing the scale in it; and they will be found to depend on the proportion of its length or breadth to 1130 feet. The sound of the stopped diapason pipes of an organ is produced in a manner somewhat similar to the note from an explosion in a passage; and that of its reed pipes to the resonance of the voice in a room: the length of the pipe in one case determining the sound, in the other, increasing its strength. The frequency of the vibrations does not at all immediately depend on the diameter of the pipe. It must be confessed, that much remains to be done in explaining the precise manner in which the vibration of the air in an organ pipe is