• Question: how does headphones work

    Asked by lawze91 to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 2 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 2 Jul 2012:


      Hi lawze91,

      Sound is made my vibrations of the air, with different sounds due to different vibrations. Headphones and speakers work, by taking the electrical information from your music player (the CD laser on a CD player or the computer code from an MP3 file) and send that down the wire to the headphones or speaker, which then has a component that vibrates to turj the electrical information into music or speach for your to hear.

      When music is made, it is recorded off the instrument and this recording writes the electronic signal that the headphones eventually decode.

    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 2 Jul 2012:


      HI lawze,
      The electrical signal travels down the wire to the headphones. In the headphones, the electrical signals cause a small plate to vibrate. The vibrations are what creates the sound waves that your ears hear.

      The best way to see how speakers work is to look at low frequency sounds on large speakers – you can actually see the plate in the speaker moving, creating the vibrations that your ear hears. Headphones are just tiny speakers placed in your ear.

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