Physics 1240 : Sound and Music

Fall 2005

Professor Steven Pollock

Classroom:   Duane G1B30
12:30-1:45 PM Tuesdays/Thursdays


Announcements


All done!

Thanks for a fun semester, hope you enjoyed it too.



Here are the Physics simulations referred to in class and on homework #2. (Look for "wave on a string" and "sound")

From the American Institute of Physics: Electron-microscope image of the world's smallest guitar, based roughly on the design for the Fender Stratocaster, a popular electric guitar. Its length is 10 millionths of a meter-- approximately the size of a red blood cell and about 1/20th the width of a single human hair. Its strings have a width of about 50 billionths of a meter (the size of approximately 100 atoms). Plucking the tiny strings would produce a high-pitched sound at the inaudible frequency of approximately 10 megahertz. Made by Cornell researchers with a single silicon crystal, this tiny guitar is a playful example of nanotechnology, in which scientists are building machines and structures on the scale of billionths of a meter to perform useful technological functions and study processes at the submicroscopic level. (Image courtesy Dustin W. Carr and Harold G. Craighead, Cornell.)

And, an update: A nanoguitar, devised at Cornell years ago, has been "played" for the first time by shooting laser light at the silicon "strings." A newer version of the guitar, shown above, twangs at a frequency of 40 megahertz, some 17 octaves (or a factor of 130,000) higher than a normal guitar.

Please email me any comments and suggestions for this class information page as well as interesting links for the course website. steven.pollock@colorado.edu

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