Project:Young Hackspace/YH-3
Links:
Physics of Sound Demos
These are all just proposals. Have yet to try them. Good topics: Periodic motion, the relationship between motion and sound, the frequency spectrum, resonance, harmony, etc.
Wine Glasses
Everybody knows this one. But: we have equipment to visualise the frequencies!
- Ken: Wine glasses tuned to different notes with a microphone and osciloscope to show the waveform
Wave Machine
Nice, simple. Maybe a bit brittle; but invites playful interaction, which is perfect.
- Paul: http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/resource/2096/wave-machine
- "adhesive tape, jelly babies [really any kind of weight] and wooden skewers"
Slinky
(artag put one in martind's box.)
- Lay it on a table, waggle the end, watch the wave perturbation propagate.
Glob Monster
From Anthony.
- Take the amp in the space, lay it on its back and cover the speaker cone with cling film.
- Mix up some non-Newtonian fluid (corn starch & water) and throw a decent sized glob of it onto the cling film protected speaker.
- Throw various audio signals through the speaker and watch the glob monster dance!
- DIY cymatics!
Ruben's Tube
Fire! What could go wrong.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubens'_tube
- SamLR said he might build one
Plasma Speaker/Flame Amplifier
Cool demo, but probably too much work to build.
- Billy: http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/PopularElectronics/May1968/Flame_Amplification.htm
- Randomskk: plasma speaker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEeWtBAE5LY
Directional Sound
Not quite sure how to build this.
- Ken: "How about one of those "sound wave" guns that allows you to fire a pulse of air across a room and put a candle out?"
Sound Generators
Misc ideas for sound generating setups, these things won't necessarily teach you anything but they're fun to play with.
- Ken: Photon phone, make a musical note by tapping a small filament lighbulb from which the light output has been focussed onto a phototransistor and suitable audio amplifier. Old style reflector bike lamps were good for this.
- Ken: Arduino theremin or note generator / bender controlled from 2 axis joystick
- Ken: Musical drawing - use soft graphite pencil on paper to make carbon resistive traces of different shapes and resistances. Trace the drawing with a metal probe to get different sounds from an oscillator - use anlog inputs of Arduino
Resonating Spring
There's an excellent piece at the British Art Show at the Hayward Gallery atm, "A Grammar for Listening," where Luke Fowler and a few sound artists filmed sound environments. In one they attached one side of a metal spring to a stand, and subjected it to vibrations (audio oscillators?) of changing frequencies which resulted in amazing organic flows of periodic/chaotic movements.
