NCAA Tournament to use Precision Timing

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by BadNewsRef

It's the air from the whistle that stops the clock, not the sound of the whistle.

Originally Posted by Camron Rust

The mic isn't close enough to the whistle for the air coming through the whistle to even affect it. Microphones detect sound, that's it.

Both of you guys are right, and both of you guys are wrong.

The microphone does detect air, actually the movement of air. Sound is a vibration that propagates as a typically audible mechanical wave of pressure and displacement, through a medium such as air, or water.

Also, no air (or no medium), no sound propagation. I used to teach my middle school science students that if two astronauts were an inch apart on the surface of the Moon (no atmosphere), and yelled at each other at the top of their lungs, that neither would hear the other one (unless their space helmets were touching).