For the past couple weeks, we were assigned to build three types of musical instruments: string, wind, and chime. Our goal was for each of our instruments to play an A, B, C, D, E, F, and G note. My group built a steel drum (bonus project), a variation of a clarinet, chimes using glass bottles, and a bass-styled string instrument. Below is a document including all of our building procedures and materials we used.
Concepts
Frequency- how often a vibration occurs
Amplitude- distance for the mid-point to the crest/trough of a wave
Wavelength- distance from the top of one crest to the top of the next one
Period- the time of a back and forth swing
Wave- a wiggle in space and time
Transverse Wave- the medium motion that occurs perpendicular (right angled) to the direction in which a wave travels
Longitudinal Wave-when displacement of the medium is in the same direction as the wave (not perpendicular) Destructive Interference Wave- 2 opposite waves meet, cancel each other out and create a flatline Constructive Interference Wave- 2 waves meet and create a bigger wave Node- a certain point on the medium that remain stationary Antinode- positions on a standing wave with the largest amplitudes Doppler Effect- the apparent change to frequency due to the motion of the source Blue Shift- an increase in frequency
Reflection
I had lots of fun learning how to make a working instrument! When Mr. Williams first told us about our task I was beyond excited to work on it. Lindsey, Bella, and Camille were all in my group and we got along very nicely. One of the peaks was our research before the actual building, In the beginning, we dedicated a day to just researching and learning as much as we could about each instrument. This made things easier when we started to sketch our designs. Another peak was how well we communicated. We were all very comfortable with each other so we weren't afraid of speaking up when we had an opinion.
We did have a lot of high point but we also had a few low ones. A pit for my group was difinitly time management. We started noticing we were in a bad position when we realized we had completly forgotten about an instrument. We figured it out at the end and made all of our instruments successfully. Another pit was that my group was very easily distracted. It was a struggle for us to keep on track and not waste any time. For example, when we were looking at youtube videos, we got completely side tracked which causes us to be not as productive as we could of been. I think next time I should be the one who keeps everyone on task to give us more rpoductive time.