Tuning Fork and Palm Pipe Lab

In class we experimented with the tuning forks and palm pipes and learned the physics behind why they produce certain notes.

Tuning Forks:

Hitting the tuning fork against my shoe caused it to vibrate at a certain frequency. By finding out this frequency we were able to determine what note it was playing. We recorded this by placing the microphone plugged in to the lab quest next to the fork. We were then able to analyze the data by reading the graph. The peaks were evenly spaced which shows that it is a harmonic. This means that there are multiples of the fundamental frequency. A fundamental frequency, also called the 1st harmonic, is the lowest possible frequency that makes a standing wave.The tuning fork's vibrations react to the air around it which causes it to make a sound. This explains why certain musical instruments sound different from each other even while playing the same note. Music is actually mathematical and occurs because it is promotional, while noise is just random.


Palm Pipe:

For this lab everyone was given a pipe (sizes varied) and we had to find what note it produced when hit form one side. We started by measuring the pipe and then finding the diameter. I made sure to only measure the part where the air would be moving through instead of the extra plastic around the sides. We were given the equation of length=1/4wavelength - 1/4diameter. Once we found the wavelength we could plug it into our other equation: 343m/s=(wavelength)(frequency). By finding the frequency we could then put in into wolfram alpha to see what note it played.