build a band

The goal for this project was to construct three different instrument that could play a full octave plus one extra note. The three instruments had to be wind, chime, and strings. Heres what we made;

The process:

To start our group was very in experienced with music, and very few of us had ever picked up an instrument before. However we were experienced in the ways of making sound waves, and knew as long as we got a material to vibrate with enough frequency through our medium (air) then we would start making sound waves by the transitioning of energy through particles. We also knew that different instruments used different sized pieces, to create notes. For example a string's instrument, used twice the sized cord as flutes, used for their pipes. This is because a pipe allows particles to bounce and vibrates more within the small pipe allowing smaller wavelengths compared to the vast open medium sound waves from a guitar would travel though. Secondly different instruments use different types of waves for example a chime is a hard rigid object that allows transversal waves (where the particles move perpendicular to one another) unlike stringed instruments which have a much smaller medium, (being air/gases) which allows longitudinal waves to travel through, (where particles move horizontally into one another.) This all allows our radio waves, ( the longest wave of the electro-magnetic spectrum) to travel and make our musical instruments a possibility.

Now that we know how sound waves worked, and what requirements were needed to make our particles react a certain way.We set out to work building our instruments, we chose to use a 6 stringed guitar as our string instrument, a xylophone as our chime instrument, and lastly a flute for our wind instrument. Next we got to work tensioning strings, cutting pipes and lots of measuring to make sure our sound waves would produce the correct frequency to make each note recognizable. We also made a little box around the xylophone and guitar, to allow amplified sound waves towards the audience resulting in a louder note. Halfway through the build unfortunately a pandemic started to spread across America and the rest of the world too. We put down our tools and instruments and unfortunately have not seen them since.

Reflection:

Regardless of this project not being finished I still believe I learned quite a bit, well besides how to play an instrument unfortunately. However I learned to be more grateful for what opportunities we have in life and a lot more about how physics and particles are all around us and they can teach us some amazing things like how you're reading this right now. Although I do feel like I progressed in my collaboration skills for meeting new people and persevering through struggles even when we're all social distancing. And secondly critical thinking especially over particles and how they interact with another was definitely a difficult topic for me to get my head around but giving real world examples, definitely helped me and thinking about how it would work within our instruments.