Well said Hugh. When one talks about the Doppler effect, I remember a friend who worked in a race car pit telling me that he could tell if his car was up to speed due to the change in frequency of the car as it went by him. A stopwatch was not part of his inventory. With the Indy 500 or other races coming up, why not listen for it. It is interesting to evaluate the car going by and the Doppler shift heard on the TV. In most instances I think the source of sound is not from the car seen on TV. What do you think?
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-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh Haskell [SMTP:hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM]
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 12:04 PM
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Subject: Re: Doppler Effect Question
Thanks, Gary, for bringing this thread back to reality before it got
completely out of hand. We on this list like to spend a lot of time
wallowing in the mud of complexities far beyond those envisioned by
the original questioner. I marvel at the number of times that, by the
time a thread is finished the originator of the thread has learned
far more than they ever wanted to about the subject.
Not that the mud is unimportant, or uninteresting. I, as a frequent
lurker (and less frequent contributor) on many of the threads, have
often learned a great deal that I hadn't realized before and I value
that. But we often forget that these complexities, while interesting
to us, often only serve to confuse the person who had the original
question. I certainly don't want the contributors to this list to be
bashful about contributing their complexities (as if I could!), but
it is important for all of us to remember that, while it is
interesting and important to know that almost any problem has
complexities that lies below the surface, one must start with a
simpler model and only add the complexities once the simpler model is
understood.