Science

A physicist proved sound bends pitch by testing trumpeters on a moving train

Christian Doppler predicted in 1842 that a sound's pitch should rise as its source approaches and fall as it recedes. Three years later, Dutch scientist Christophorus Buys Ballot tested it by having trumpeters play a sustained note aboard a speeding locomotive while musicians on the platform judged the pitch shift by ear. It matched the prediction, and the same effect now explains redshifted starlight and police radar guns.

Christian Doppler; tested by Christophorus Buys Ballot, Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne (On the Coloured Light of Double Stars) — 1842; experimental test 1845

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