# Tag Info

16

Usually, the (sinusoidal) driven harmonic oscillator is damped, and the first two parts of your solution (which depend on the initial conditions, while the third term does not) are transient, i.e. not relevant after a short time. That the solution $$x(t) = \frac{F_0\sin(\omega t)}{m(\omega_0^2 - \omega^2)}$$ cannot be the "full" solution to the equation of ...

10

When you pluck a string or hit a drum or sound a not on a flute, the instrument and the air in and around it vibrate and this vibration propagates as sound waves in the air to your hear drum. When you hear an instrument being played, what you recognise as the note is the base frequency. 'C' corresponds to $261.6$ Hz and is the same for a piano or a guitar. ...

4

Clearly the motion of the mass can not be described by a single sine! What's going on here? The general solution to the simple harmonic oscillator is the sum of the unforced response (homogeneous solution) and the forced response. The homogeneous solution is $$x_h(t) = x_h(0) \cos(\omega_0 t) + \frac{\dot x_h(0)}{\omega_0}\sin(\omega_0 t)$$ Thus, ...

3

There is a technique called flageolet where you damp the string with a finger laid lightly onto the site at the node of a higher harmonic. You do not press the string to the fretboard but just damp the string at a position, where there is a node of the specific harmonic. When you now pluck the string all harmonics, which do not have a node at the specified ...

3

Pitch, in music, is equivalent to frequency. How often the wavefore cycles. This is usually defined by length, i.e. how long the string is, how long the pipe is, etc. It can also be affected by the tension (how tight the string is.) Timbre, the sound of a specific instrument, is defined by the "shape" of the wavefore, whether spikes, round, square, or ...

2

This is the classical treatment to model vibrations in solids, using the analogy with vibrations of a one-or-two dimensional monatomic or diatomic chains. Which basically boils down to writing Newton's equation of motion to find out the force on each mass when the whole system constitutes of masses attached by Hookean springs, i.e. for our purposes the ...

1

I was just researching this kind of questions, since the derivation found in most textbooks, in terms of tension, seems a little unrelated to material properties. Three things: As pointed out, the tension T needs to be inside the square root The velocity of sound in the string material is unrelated to the (phase) velocity of the wave. As the formula shows, ...

1

Yes, it most certainly can. It's much easier to visualize if you consider a length of flexible steel or plastic. You can shake it a bit, then toss it in the air so it's not constrained, and it will (if properly initiated) vibrate at a resonant wavelength. I think the confusion most people will get from your question is that everyday string is "floppy," ...

1

A "standing wave" is not a real wave - it is simply our observing the superposition of two waves - one traveling to the left and one traveling to the right. If they have the same amplitude and propagate at the same velocity there will be stationary points on the string. This is true regardless of whether the ends of the string are "open" or "closed". ...

1

The speed of sound should apply to $v$ because the sound waves are travelling through the air after it leaves the organ pipe. The speed of sound is approximated by the following formula: $$v = 331.3 + 0.606T$$ Where $T$ is the temperature in degrees Celsius, and $v$ is the velocity in meters per second. In your case, suppose you're at room temperature ...

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