• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 2003

Rayleigh was an excellent experimenter as well as a theorist. Rayleigh improved Rijke's sounding device by heat and the singing flame into sources of pure tones. Above all, his making of the artificial bird whistle was a critical achievement in the improvement of experimental sound sources. This source made supersonic waves available in the laboratory and thus paved the way to confirmable observations of reflection, refraction, diffraction and interference of sound in the laboratory Furthermore, Rayleigh augmented the sensitivity of sensitive flames as detectors for sound wave. Besides, he devised a phonic wheel which could precisely control the angular velocity of some acoustical instruments and made the Rayleigh-disk that enabled experimenters to measure the absolute value of the sound intensity. These devices enhanced the exactness of acoustical experiments.