The Doppler Effect

I was reading Oze's predictions for the 6th year minipets, deciding which ones to steal and all that. I read Doppleganger and it reminded me of this randomly! And since I enjoy random I thought I'd share it with you. Aren't you all so lucky!

So basically what the Doppler Effect is, is that effect you get when standing at the side of the road watching cars speed past (everyone stands around doing that right?) and as a car approaches the pitch of its engine noise gets higher but as it goes by, the pitch starts dropping to a bass sort of rumble. So if the car is at a standstill, the sound waves will radiate at an equal frequency in all directions. However, when the car is speeding fast, sound waves at the front of the car bunch up and travel faster, making the waves shorter and sound higher, then as it passes you the waves spread out and take longer to reach as the car speeds away from you, resulting in a drop in pitch level.

Wasn't that just fascinating. I expect your lives have been turned upside down by that revelation. Go me.

I'm totally going outside to stand at the side of the road later to hear this awesomeness!