1.) Find a empty beverage container with a bottle neck less than 2.54 cm (one in
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Question
1.) Find a empty beverage container with a bottle neck less than 2.54 cm (one inch) in diameter. Typical 0.5 liter water bottles (or something similar) work quite well. Take a deep breath of air and uniformly exhale the air (blowing the air) across the top of the empty bottle. Listen to the sound. Make a mental note of the sound that results from this action. Repeat several times so as to get the same quality of sound on each exhale. Now fill the bottle half way to the top. Repeat the exhaling process. Do the exhaling several times. Again, the idea is to get a reproducible sound.
Now compare the sounds from these two different situations. Which bottle produced the highest frequency sound, the empty bottle or the half empty bottle?
Repeat for several more different and partial fillings of the bottle. Sketch your bottles and arrange the bottles in ranking, low frequency to high frequency. As a side note low frequency sounds have a lot of “bass” and high frequency sounds have a lot of “soprano” character. Which bottle, completely empty or nearly completely filled would be the high frequency “soprano”? and which bottle would be the “bass”?
Ask your children or your nephews and nieces? A good source of relatively inexpensive labor and entertainment.
Alternatively, if you happen to have access to a wind instrument, try tuning the instrument and briefly describe the process of tuning. If you play the instrument, describe how you figure how to produce a particular sound.
In the exercise above, you may simply write down your observations, describe your sketches, and report (submit) your results in an email.
If you get eight of your pals together with eight different heights of water, you can produce an octave of sounds. Play some simple tunes. Describe what you do.
Explanation / Answer
A half empty bottle produces more sound than full empty bottle. As we blow in the top of the bottle air column vibrates and as this air column shrinks and produces a higher pitch.
Nearly empty bottles have lower frequencies and have a lot of base characteristics and the nearly full bottles have a soprano characteristics and higher pitch.
When tuning a guitar the tuning involves tightening the strings or loosen them to get a desirable sound, When playing the instrument the Frets are pressed to change the relative length and frequency of the strings.
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