system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What does it mean for a speaker to be "blown"? And how does it happen?

I've always heard that turning the volume up too high can blow your speakers, but never really understood what that meant... Please ELI5!
gpt
*Blowing* a speaker is basically an umbrella term for catastrophic physical failure.  This can take the form of a circuit overheating and melting (or burning), or sometimes it's because of mechanical damage.

The mechanical damage happens because of the way sound works.  Sound is created by making something vibrate, which in turn pushes air outwards in ripples.  You can describe sound in terms of frequency (how many ripples is a given length) and in terms of *amplitude* (how high are the ripples?).

To make sound louder, you need to give your air waves more amplitude, which means the membrane of your speaker (the part that vibrates) has to flex further and further out.  Eventually, it flexes out so far that it breaks.