For our most recent lab in class, we were assigned to find out what musical note a certain piece of PVC pipe would play if we smacked one end of the pipe against our palms. We began by finding the length of the pipe and the diameter of the hole. We would then plug these values into an equation that would help us find the wavelength of that particular pipe. (Length = Wavelength/4 - Diameter/4)
After plugging in our values into this equation and solving, we would get a wavelength value, and plug that into another equation. (Speed = Frequency x Wavelength) This equation allowed us to find the frequency and from there we entered our frequency value into a Wolfram Alpha app which told us the musical note of the frequency we found.
Once our whole class found their musical notes, we played a couple songs like Happy Birthday and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by smacking our pipes in our hands in the correct order. This lab was really just good practice for using our equations and learning more about wavelengths. It also helped me understand more about the different harmonics in pipes and how they're different from the harmonics in strings.
(Using the Palm Pipe)
(Labquest, showing the FFT graph of the palm pipe)
