Final answer:
When touching a bell that has recently stopped ringing, vibrations may still be felt, indicating the mechanical nature of sound. In a lab experiment, increasing the volume of music causes a table to vibrate strongly. This shows how sound volume and amplitude are related to physical vibrations.
Step-by-step explanation:
When you touch a bell after it has stopped producing a sound, you may still feel vibrations. This is because sound is a form of energy that travels through the air as waves, caused by vibrating objects. The physical sensation of these vibrations can continue even when the sound has ceased to be audible, which underscores how closely related sound is to mechanical vibrations.
In the context of the student's lab experiment, increasing the volume on a CD player playing rock music will cause the adjacent light table to vibrate. This occurs because louder sounds have greater amplitude, meaning the air molecules are moving more dramatically, which transfers more energy to the surface of the table. As the volume doubles, the intensity of these vibrations also increases, and this can be physically felt as a stronger shaking or rumbling of the table.
Such experiments demonstrate important physics concepts, like the relationship between the amplitude of sound waves and the perceived volume, as well as the concept of resonance. This understanding is fundamental when studying harmonic motion and oscillation in physics.