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Explain what happens to the pitch of a cell phone ring when the amplitude of a sound wave increases. Justify your reasoning using complete sentences and key vocabulary.

User Maninalift
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Pitch is sometimes defined as the fundamental frequency of a sound wave. For most practical purposes, this is fine, and pitch and frequency can be thought of as equivalent. On the other hand, for most practical purposes, amplitude can be thought of as volume.

However, technically, pitch and volume are human perceptions. Thus, our perception of pitch and volume are not solely based on frequency and amplitude respectively, but are based on a combination of both. Frequency overwhelming dictates perceived pitch, but amplitude also does have some small, small effect on our pitch perception, especially when it is very large. For example, a very loud sound can have a different perceived pitch than you would predict from its frequency alone.

Hope that helps!

User Ivan Dimov
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