The Sound of Music Sound is a form of energy in a mechanical, longitudinal wave.

The length of any wave is measured in wavelength, and the amount of waves that pass in one second is the frequency. Period is the opposite of frequency; it is the time it takes for one wave to pass. In experiments, wavelength is sometimes replaced on either the x or y axis by the length of whatever is making sound on the instrument, or the length of whatever is vibrating. In my case, I have a panpipe instrument, and the wavelength is the length of each pipe. The speed or velocity of a wave is how much distance the wave covers in how much time. Frequency multiplied by wavelength is equal to velocity or speed of the wave. The velocity of sound in air is approximately 340 m/s. The denser the medium, or matter that the sound waves travel through, the faster they will travel. Density is how close together the molecules of the medium are to each other, so since sound is vibrating molecules, the closer together the molecules are, the faster the vibrations travel through, giving it a domino effect. Reflection is where the waves bounce off a surface, and refraction is where they bend when passing through a medium. Diffraction is where the sound waves travel around an obstacle, like when they go through a hole and spread out on the other side like a fan. Parameters of an instrument control the pitch and frequency of the sound that comes out. In science labs like Twinkle Tubes, we made the parameters of the lab air column length, and this also applies to my pan pipe. The more air the sound has to vibrate through, the lower the frequency and pitch. I chose to make my instrument a flute at first because I thought the design would be easy. But after I made my cardboard flute, I found I could not blow any notes! So I turned to my back up plan: a panpipe. I looked online for pictures of panpipes and instructions on how to build a panpipe. I found instructions on a reliable website from a high school girl who won a Science Olympiad competition and used their idea of using pennies as stoppers on the end of the panpipe tube. Then, I found exact measurements for the tubes on a different website. When I was making my project, I had trouble making the ends of the tubes airtight. I overcame this problem by tightly wrapping the end with duct tape. I would change how my pipes are connected and duct tape them more neatly. I would change (sound-wise) how the tops of the tubes are flat, and cut a little notch in the edge since it should make it easier to play. The most valuable thing I learned from this project is that when you adjust the length of your parameters, you have to also control the width. Sound Project Lab Write Up Purpose: The purpose of this experiment was to verify the accuracy of our sound project and practice converting the period we get into frequency. Data Table:

Logger Pro Graphs:

Low Note Two waves highlighted Period=0.0043245 seconds Frequency= 231.240606 Hz

High Note Five waves highlighted Period=0.0019276 seconds Frequency=518.77983 Hz

Middle note Three waves highlighted Period=0.00281666667 seconds Frequency=355.029585 Hz

Length vs. Pitch

The purpose of this experiment was to verify the accuracy of our sound project and practice converting the periods of the waves we get into frequency. Errors in our data collection may include how we did not select exact waves from the precise end and beginning of the waves. I learned that my base not and octave note relationship is very close but not the correct ratio.