Sing to the ice, and the ice sings back

If you skip a rock across a frozen lake, you'll hear a characteristic chirping sound each time the rock touches down on the ice (as in the video above). What can explain this phenomena?

Sound goes through ice, bounces off the round lake bottom, smoothing the signal that you hear. High frequencies travel faster than low frequencies in ice, so you hear a changing frequency. Sound bounces off the ice, to the houses and shoreline, then comes back overlapped. The rock vibrates when it hits the ice, since it is round, it emits a broad range of frequencies.

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1 solution

Gagan Jain
May 5, 2015

It is due to beats.We know that beats are heard only when two different types of frequencies are heard.

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