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Investigation and Experiment with Sound
I. Investigating the Sound Of Music
Music is a number of sounds that come one after another, hopefully, bringing pleasure to the listener. Many instruments depend on air columns which vibrate in a tube. Mythology refers to
the wood-spirit, Pan, as playing music with the instrument called "pipes of Pan." Pipe instruments
can be thought of as whistles with varying lengths which produce notes of different pitch. The outline below shows you how to make a model of Pan's musical instrument.
To begin:
Take 8 test tubes and place in a test-tube rack.
Blow across the tube on the left when it is empty, but listen carefully to the pitch of the note which is produced. Think of this note as "do" on the music scale.
Next, pour a small amount of water in the next tube and blow across it. This produces a higher note, but do you know why? Add or subtract water of this tube until it produces the note "re."
Continue with this method on the remaining test tubes until you have created all the notes on a musical scale. You may need to ask for help from a friend, teacher, or parent. There are some people who can detect musical pitch with greater accuracy. After finishing, make careful measurements of the air column from each tube. You need to record the measurements in a chart for future references.
Musical scale theory says that the frequency of the notes have simple, but definite relationships to
one another. The relationships are outlined in simple form below:
Note on Scale and Frequency by Pythagorean Tuning:
1. do...............1/1
2. re................frequency of do X 9/8
3. me...............frequency of do X 5/4
4. fa................frequency of do X 4/3
5. sol...............frequency of do X 3/2
6. la................frequency of do X 5/3
7. ti.................frequency of do X 15/8
8. do...............frequency of do X 2
Can you discover the relationship between lengths of air from your "pipes of Pan" and the note frequency which they produce?
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