For this project, we were given a task to build three different types of instruments: strings, woodwind, and chimes. Surprisingly, majority of us either had played instruments before or still plays and are involved in many music programs at San Marin High School, so it was very easy for us to connect between musical instruments and physics/engineering of this project. After finish building, we also had to explain the physics behind each instruments fully and write a song about sound waves or other physics concepts.
Explanation of our instruments and our song:
-Concepts- Wave: a wiggle in space and time Amplitude: the distance from the mid point to the crest(trough) of the wave Period: a time required to complete a single cycle Frequency: how often a vibration occurs Wave Length: the distance from the top of one crest to the top of the next one Longitudinal Wave: a wave that particles move along the direction of the wave rather than at right angles at it Transverse Wave: the medium motion that is right angles to the direction in which a wave travels constructive Interference: reinforcement; when the crest of one wave overlaps the crest of another, their individual effects add together destructive Interference: when the crest of one wave overlaps the troft of another, their individual effects are reduced and cancel each other out Node: remain stationary in a certain parts of the rope Antinodes: the positions on a standing wave with the largest amplitudes Doppler Effect: the apparent change in frequency due to the motion of the source Red Shift: An decrease in frequency Blue Shift: An increase in frequency
-Reflection- I really enjoyed working on this project. This was one of the project that I had been looking forward to since the beginning of this year. My group worked very well together. We had five people in our group and we had to build four instruments, so we devided the work to finish building in time. Olivia and I worked on the string instrument(Ukulele), Olivia G and Shannon worked on the chimes & percussion, and Shansta worked on the wind instrument (pan flute). We had many peaks in our group. Each one of us forcused and worked so hard on this project. When we faced problems, we encouraged each other and try to solve it through it together as a team. From working together and having good conversations, we came up with very good ideas on how to make our group instruments different than others. The results were very good too! Everyone enjoyed listening and looking at our instruments and, all our instruments made 8notes (for Ukulele more than 8!). We don't live in perfect world; we are not perfect, so of course, there were very few pits. One of the pits was the time management. When Olivia and I worked on our Ukulele, we wanted this to be perfect that we focused on small detailed things, which led us to have very limited time to finish building. Also, when we finished building and were giving tension to the strings, the neck of our ukulele snapped. We stayed up after school and I ended up taking it home to fix and finish building. From this mistake, I learned to use the time wisely(not much on detailed things!) so we don't run into time management problems. I also learned to be patient and never give up. When the neck of our ukulele snapped, I was very frustrated and bewildered, I just wanted to give up. However, I learned to overcome those feelings and face the problem. Overall, I really, really enjoyed working on this project with my group members! :)