Final answer:
To determine which musical instruments produce high or low pitches without hearing them, compare their physical sizes. High-pitch instruments are typically smaller, correlating with the smaller wavelengths they produce, while low-pitch instruments are larger. The size and shape of an instrument are key indicators of the pitches it can produce.
Step-by-step explanation:
If you are observing two musical instruments and are tasked with determining which produces high-pitch sounds and which produces low-pitch sounds without hearing them, you can often use physical characteristics to make this distinction. High-pitch instruments are generally smaller than low-pitch instruments because higher pitches are associated with smaller wavelengths. For example, a piccolo is smaller than a tuba and produces higher-pitched sounds. Players of instruments like the flute or oboe vary the pitch of sounds by changing the effective length of the tube through opening and closing fingerholes, and on a trombone, pitch variation is achieved by adjusting the sliding tube. The size and shape of an instrument are key indicators of the pitches it can produce.
Another example, beats, occur when two waves of similar but not identical frequencies interfere, creating a varying loudness. This can be heard when striking two adjacent keys on a piano, or the sound of two jet engines with slightly different frequencies. This principle of interfering sound waves doesn't directly help in identifying instruments without hearing them, but it provides context on how wave frequencies can interact.