Running Tap Water
It is a common experience for many people that when we open a tap to fill a bucket with water, the sound becomes shriller and shriller as the water in the bucket gets filled. The phenomenon which explains this is the pitch.
Pitch is that characteristic of sound by which an acute (or shrill) note can be distinguished from a grave or flat one. If the pitch is high, the sound is shrill, and if the pitch is low, the sound is flat. The pitch of a note depends on its frequency.
Now, why does the sound from the bucket gets shriller as the water gets filled?
- See also Resonance with Tuning Fork and Crossing the Bridge .
- For more of these, see my set Self Created Stuff .
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
As the water level in the bucket kept under a water tap rises the length of the the air column decreases, so the frequency of the sound produces increases because the frequency of the sound produced has to vibrate in a small area (due to the decrease in length of air column).
Therefore, the sound gets shriller and shriller and one can estimate the level of water in the bucket .