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A quantitative demonstration of the Doppler effect

Article  in  The Physics Teacher · October 2001

DOI: 10.1119/1.1416317

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 A Quantitative
Demonstration
of the Doppler Effect
Marcelo M. F. Saba, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)
Av. dos Astronautus, 1758, São José dos Campos,
SP Brazil; saba@dge.inpe.br
Rafael Antônio da S. Rosa, Quark Science Club, São José dos Campos,
SP Brazil
Authors: Please check your addresses
to make sure they are right.

A
lthough several qualitative demonstra-
tions and experiments of the Doppler
effect have been published, only a very
few quantitative experiments are found in the
literature.1 The one described in this note illus-
trates a new and very efficient technique for
studying the Doppler effect quantitatively. As
often happens, I came across the idea of this
method while looking for something else. I was
analyzing the spectrogram of some thunder
recorded during a lightning storm when it oc-
curred to me that recording the sound of the
horn of a passing car would be a good way to
study the Doppler effect.
A tape recorder and software, available on the Fig. 1. Spectrogram of car at rest. Small
web,2 that generates sound spectrograms from white numbers indicate the harmonics
.wav audio files is about all one needs to repro- shown in the next figure.
duce this experiment.
The Spectrogram The Doppler Effect
The spectrogram software used displays the In order to record the sound of the horn mov-
audio signal as a frequency-versus-time plot with ing at a constant velocity, we used a long straight
the signal amplitude at each frequency represent- road with little traffic. Inside the car three per-
ed by intensity (or color). Also, a continuous sons were responsible for reading the velocity
readout of time (ms), frequency (Hz), and signal (which should be constant), pressing the horn,
level (dB) at the position of the mouse pointer and of course driving the car safely.
(cursor) allows an easy sampling of the frequen- To record the sound of the moving horn, you
cies with maximum signal level. A table contain- can use a simple tape recorder or a video cam-
ing the intensity of different frequencies for a corder. The advantage of using the video cam-
chosen time can also be generated. corder is that you can check later the moment at
Figure 1 shows how the sound of my car horn which the car was passing right in front of the
appears in a spectrogram. Here came the first microphone. If a camcorder is not used, this
pleasant surprise. The very clear presence of moment can still be read in the spectrogram; it
multiple frequencies, or harmonics, was not ex- will be the one at which the changing frequency
pected. Neither was the exact proportionality equals the frequency of the source at rest.
among the peak frequencies (Fig. 2). The sound recorded is then transferred to a

THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 39, November 2001 15

 5
14
5000
12
4500
6
10 4000

3500
Relative amplitude

8 2
3000
3

Frequency (Hz)
6 r=0.99
7 2500
1 4 8 9 2000
4 10 11
1500
2
1000

0 500

0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
(a) Frequency (Hz) (b) Peak number

Fig. 2. (a) Frequency spectrum. (b) Linear relationship among harmonic frequencies.

computer. This can easily be done if your com-
puter has a “line in” sound connector (comput-
ers with a sound card have it). Connect the “line
out” of your tape recorder to the “line in” of your
computer. Any sound-recorder software will
then digitize the sound, which can be saved as a
.wav file. This file can be read and analyzed by
the cited spectrogram software. After adjusting
some parameters, the spectrogram of the moving
horn, at a constant velocity of 70 kph (44 mph),
appears as shown in Fig. 3.
In this figure, the Doppler effect can be im-
mediately observed. The harmonic frequencies
increase as the car approaches the microphone
and decrease as it recedes. We can also observe
that the higher the frequency of the harmonic,
the higher will be its deviation from the frequen-
cy of the horn at rest (shown as a black line in
Fig. 3).
In order to see how well the Doppler effect
would explain the variation in the recorded fre-
quency observed in Fig. 3, the following proce-
dure was taken:
1. The horn frequency for a chosen harmonic
was read at constant time intervals (e.g., 100
ms). This can easily be done placing the cur-
sor on the curve.
2. For each time and frequency, we estimated
the distance and velocity of the car relative to
the microphone. Note that as the micro-
phone is not at the car’s trajectory, the ap-
proaching and receding velocities (v) will not
be that of the car (vc ). The distance d from
the trajectory to the microphone must be
taken into consideration (Fig. 4):
x
v = vci␣ = vc ᎏ
兹x苶2苶d
+ 苶2苶

vs
3. Then using equation fD = ᎏᎏ
vs+v
f0, we
冢 冣
calculated fD, which is the frequency
predicted by the Doppler effect. Here f0 is the
Fig. 3. Spectrogram of moving car. frequency of the car at rest and vs is the speed of

16 THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 39, November 2001

 vc 3700

3650 Theory
v Spectrogram
3600

car 3550

Frequency (Hz)
3500

3450

x 3400

camera and/or 3350

microphone
α d 3300

3250
-0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Times (s)

Fig. 5. Calculated and recorded frequency varia-

tions.

Fig. 4. Schematic geometry to calculate the Acknowledgments

approaching and receding speeds.
sound (vs = 345 m/s for an ambient temperature
of 23⬚C).
Figure 5 is a graph of the frequency taken
from the spectrogram and the calculated fre-
quency (theory) versus time. As one can ob-
serve, the agreement between the frequency vari-
ation shown in the spectrogram and the frequen-
cy predicted by the Doppler effect is very good.
The use of this method can be applied to a
whole spectrum of situations where moving ob-
jects produce a constant frequency sound.
The authors would like to thank the students
João Gabriel de Magalhães, Vítor José Ferreira
da Nóbrega, and Ricardo Motoyama and for
their help with this work.
References
1. R. Gagne, “Determining the speed of sound us-
ing the Doppler effect,” Phys. Teach. 34, 126
(Feb. 1996).
2. GRAM software, by R. S. Horne, available at:
http://www.monumental.com/rshorne/gramdl.
html. Links to other commercial and freeware
programs for audio spectrum analysis: http://
www. monumental.com/rshorne/links.html.

THE PHYSICS TEACHER ◆ Vol. 39, November 2001 17

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