Making sound visible—a simple schlieren imaging setup for schools

Abstract

Abstract Sound is an interesting topic for physics lessons at all ages. However, it is difficult to illustrate this ubiquitous phenomenon and many models do not adequately represent the properties of sound and thus promote unwanted conceptions. The experiment presented here avoids this by visualising sound itself with the help of the schlieren technique. For this purpose, an easily reproducible variant of a schlieren setup is presented. The simple setup is described in detail.