Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi there,
I am a student who is participating in a Group 4 experiment contest, where students have to come up with experiments which have to include 3 sciences, Biology, Chemistry, Physics or Sports science ( which has a bit of the other 3) , so my group and I have thought of an experiment where by we will be transmitting sound through a laser beam, In this experiment we will distinguish how we can transmit sound waves without the need of air, by putting the laser into a vacuum, and the receiver would be outside the vacuum, well that is our investigation. So, definitely we have a big part of Physics in this experiment, as well as Chemistry ( how laser works) , what i need now is a way how i can introduce a small part of wither Biology or Sports science into this experiment. This will be a huge help. If you do not know how to help me, i would still appreciate if you could at least give me a website i can ask or refer to?
Please help.

Nibras - You have some interesting challenges here. Physical sound which propagates through air as a medium is pretty straight forward. When you propagate the physical waves through water, for example, or a metal rod, is that sound? Not to confuse you with semantics. A laser certainly could be used to transmit information that our ears would hear as sound, but it would do so by converting the sound information into electrical impulses that would likely modulate the laser. At the demodulation end, a sensor, possibly a light sensitive device or photo-diode or photo-transistor would convert the modulated laser light back to electrical impulses that could be converted by a speaker or headphone back to sound that the human ear would process. I don't see the need for the laser beam to travel through a vacuum environment. Perhaps the way you tie biology into the experiment is to follow the process by which the human ear converts the impulses to the brain that then interprets the sound as information.

Rick Marz

Hey Rick
Thank you for the advice, the whole point for my experiment is to use the laser beam to transmit sound, like proving sound needs a medium to travel through, so in this case using a monoatomic light (laser), that should be there. I even have some videos of it that it works, nd the only way to disrupt the output of the sound is by putting a hand on the path of the laser. Also let me mention the setup, the receiver we will use is a solar panel, that is connected to a speaker, nd we are using a high intensity laser as well to have a more chance of working. The laser basically carries the sound's frequency, you can perhaps say from digital to analogue information then it is received by the speaker through the solar panels, same as the way a phone is connected to the speaker but now a laser is in between. So yah if you could introduce a biology part while the experiment is still using laser to transmit sound, that would be great . I don't mind adding anything to the experiment. I just need a small biology in it.
Nibras