Making common Items into Instruments?: Weekly Blog #18

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Summary

This week in science, I learned about how different items can resonate in different ways. Through vibrations, sound is created in different frequency's and pitch. This week, I learned about how PVC pipes can be used to create musical sounds. In order to decide how we were going to go about creating a wind instrument, we had to look the fundamentals of how a normal one works. Wing instruments work by have a mouth piece blown into at a certain angle. This creates a vibration that resonates through the instruments body. This than can create a sound that can be varied by pressing down different keys that will cover different holes. depending on the different lengths and spaces between holes, different pitches can be made. 

S&EP - Using Math

I expressed relationships between variables by writing mathematical models or equations. For example, I used an equation for trying to figure out where certain notes would have to be in relativity to each other. Using an actual mathematical formula, we were able to figure out where we would need to drill the holes in the pipe for creating specific notes. Using the formula, it was able to guide us in creating our prototype and figuring how the different pitches were made.

XCC - Scale, Proportion, and Quantity

When mapping out how big the holes for the different notes would be, we had to scale the sizing on in. to cm, as well as translate all of our data into a proportion suitable for our pipe. If we were to put our calculations onto a much larger or smaller scale, we would have to accommodate for the size of the holes and the spacing. This is due to the bigger the instrument being, the lower the pitch and vice versa.