Palming Pipe and Tuning Fork Lab

     In  both the Tuning Fork Lab and Palming Pipe Lab, we discovered standing waves, otherwise known as harmonics. First, we used a tuning fork and hit it against the rubber soles of our shoes. If you held the fork up to your ear you can hear the vibration which created sound (a musical note)!  Then, we used labquest  FFT to measure the peak of the sound. It looked like this:

       As you can see, some waves are more dominant than others, but they are all mathematically proportional. This means that these waves are standing waves or "stationary waves" that remain in a constant position. These are also known as harmonics. This graph means that we see multiple harmonics that are spaced evenly apart (they are multiples of the fundamental frequency, or the lowest frequency that makes a standing wave). After measuring the peak of the highest wave, we plugged that number into Wolfhram Alpha and converted from Hz to discover what musical not the fork made.

     Shown in the image above, musical instrument create music instead of noise because the instruments create a combination of waves with various frequencies that have whole number ratios. Noise on the other hand has frequencies that are NOT  mathematically proportional. 

The difference between a woodwind and a stringed instrument is that stringed instruments (guitar, violin, etc.)

 produce transverse waves, or waves in which the medium is perpendicular to the transfer of energy while woodwind instruments (flutes,clarinets,etc.) 

 produce longitudinal waves, or waves in which the medium moves parallel to the transport of energy.

In the Palm Pipe Lab, we used 

V = ( W ) x ( f ). Our whole group chose different pipes and used rulers to measure the legnth and width of the pipe. For my pipe, I measure .06m long and .015m wide. Then, we used the formula 

Length = 1/4 (W) - 1/4 (diameter)

After that, my measurements were a bit off but once we solved for the frequency we plugged it into 

V = ( W ) x ( f ). Since we already knew that sound travels at a constant of 343 m/s, it was easy finding the frequency of the wave. After finding the frequency, we once again went to Wolfram Alpha and converted Hz to discover a musical note that we used to play a song.