Physics of a Guitar:
The guitar is one of the most popular string instruments in the world. The guitar is a part of a large group of string instruments including the ukelele, banjo, base, and violin. So for our guitar, made it out of wood, a plastic bottle, screws, and fishing wire. We calculated the length of the strings and their spacing to give us specific sounds and loudness. On the guitar, the string that vibrates to produce the sound is fixed at both ends and therefore can vibrate. Since all the strings are the same length, all 4 strings use the same range of wavelengths, although in order to produce different sound waves required, different amounts of air must be displaced at different frequencies. Since the strings are attached to the nut and bridge, when played open, or held down, have a fixed wavelength. The only factor that can be changed to produce a new frequency, is the speed of the wave. This is why the notes on a guitar sound the way they do. Physics of a Flute: Wind instruments require an initial vibration, caused by the mouth. There are many different wind instruments covering the various note ranges. There’s the flute, pan handle, clarinet, trombone, trumpet, French horn, and many more. For our wind instrument, we created a simple flute out of PVC piping. To make ours we looked up diagrams and measurements to construct it. We calculated spacing of the holes to give specific wavelengths, and played with hole size and shape to produce our desired sounds.Wind instruments typically contain some type of resonator where the column of air that you blow into the instrument is set into vibration. The notes are played when air is pushed down the tube and controlled by the keys, which cause different wavelengths. We drilled the six holes where they are by dividing the distance of the six notes we wanted to be able to play by four. We all have no musical talent so our flute doesn't sound as planned. Note : C D E F G A B C Physics of a Xylophone: The xylophone is a percussion instrument made of pieces of metal that are different lengths to resonate different frequencies. Pounding on the metal with a mallet causes the impact to resonate through the bar/tube. By rebounding the mallet after striking the metal will result in longer, louder notes or sounds. For our xylophone, we hot glued together four different sized pieces of wood to make a sturdy base. We then screwed screws into the base at equal lengths apart on both sides and wove rubber bands around them. The rubber bands were there to hold the metal off of the wooden base. If we put the metal directly on the wood, the notes would be more abrupt because there would be something interrupting the sound wave. The lengths we used for our xylophone were: ∙do: 10 1/8 inch (A) ∙so: 8 7/32 inch (E) ∙re: 9 9/16 inch (B) ∙la: 7 13/16 inch (F) ∙mi: 9 1/16 inch (C) ∙ti: 7 1/4 inch (G) ∙fa: 8 3/4 inch (D) ∙do: 7 1/16 inch (H) We placed these pieces in order from longest to shortest to create the scale of notes. Reflection: I think the project went very well and that the work was split evenly between Julia, Paige and I. |