Doppler Effect

Let c be speed of sound (in stationary air).

Source moving toward you at speed vs:

vs d
t0  0 S ☻ t1 
d I receive first crest
c c

v s d - v sT d  vsT
t2  T S ☻ t3  T  Receive 2nd crest
c
c

d vsT d v
T  my interval between crests  t3  t1  T     T (1  s )
c c c c
1 1  1 
f ' f  f '  f  vs  f
T' T  1 c 
If instead the listener moves with
speed vo toward the source:  
f '  f 1  vco  f
Preflight 22:
9) You are riding your bicycle south on Lincoln. A police car is
coming in your direction, traveling north on Lincoln, with its
sirens blaring (trying to catch your physics professor?!).
Compared to how it would sound if you and the car were
stationary, the pitch is

a) higher b) lower c) the same

10) The change in the pitch is due to

a) the motion of the police car

b) your motion on the bicycle
c) only the relative motion
d) a complicated combination of your motion and the motion
of the car
Classical Waves
Note that the exact value of the shift depends on whether the source or the
receiver is moving (though the sign depends only on relative motion).

This is because the medium in which the sound wave propagates gives a
preferred frame of reference—you can tell whether you are moving through
the air, or if the approaching fire truck is moving through the air.

However, according to special relativity there can be no preferred frame of

reference—the speed of light is identical for all observers (c.f., the Michelson-
Morley experiments). The consequence of this is that the Doppler shift for
electromagnetic radiation is the same whether or not the source is moving
or the receiver is moving (see appendix for derivation):

1 v - Top signs for decreasing separation

c cv
f f  f - Bottom signs for increasing separation
1 v c v
c - If v << c, f΄ ≈ f (1+ v/c)