There is no highest pitch in music
This idea may indicate that music is infinite not only in the combinations of notes that could be played but also in the number of notes that exist, or could exist. Any takers?
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An answer to a similar question on Quora brings up the question of if an audio frequency is beyond the range of hearing, is it actually classed as a “sound” or something else, such as a simple vibration. Quarks (probably) vibrate, right?
Interesting idea. I was intrigued, so I emailed the well-respected physicist Dr Philip Moriarty about this and although I couldn’t get a definitive yes or no answer to the question (of if there is a highest pitch), he did provide a great link to further reading and a nice insight into what, if anything would limit a very high pitch sound wave travelling in air.
“The question of a highest pitch is really intriguing… The ultimate limitation will be the response time of the medium: how quickly can the molecules/atoms transfer the energy? And that will depend, in a first approximation, on the mean free path of the molecules – i.e. how far they travel, on average, without being scattered by another molecule. And then there’s the question of the attenuation as a function of frequency.”
Looks like it depends on the medium it is travelling in. I guess if there isn’t a medium, then there isn’t a “sound”, though I may be wrong. I found this on stack exchange though…
“In a solid, the phonon frequency is periodic, since phonons are defined by lattice displacements. In this case, the maximum frequency is estimated by twice the inter-atomic distance over the speed of sound. this gives 20,000 Ghz as the limiting phonon frequency, again higher, because the speed of sound in solids can be 2-3 times higher, and (twice) the interatomic spacing is five times smaller than a liquid. So it is safe to put the upper limit of ultrasound in metals at 100,000 Ghz, and then only for small-atom metals. If you look at optical phonon bands, you can get frequencies like this over a wide range of modes.”
How could we even detect a wavelength shorter than a quark? There may be loads of sounds going on out there, well, in here, that we can’t measure. From this on wiki, pitch may be boundless, both ways.
Can’t even find out if there is an upper limit for light nevermind sound.
So is there a highest pitch or frequency? No clues here but a good video anyways.