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Richard W. Tarara wrote:
From the vast amount of traffic on this topic, it seems clear that many dothis demo, but from the lack of a coherent explanation (or the complexity
of such explanations) I fail to see the pedagogical value. Only George
Spagna's lab seems to make any real 'use' of the phenomenon. This seems to
me to be one of the many 'gee whiz' demos that we often get into but that
fail to educate in proportion to the time, effort, and expense invested in
them.
I also show Rijke tubes to any class in which I discuss
acoustics. I do let the students know that I don't quite understand the
mechanism by which they are driven by the gauze, but they oscillate at
the same fundamental frequency as any open pipe. The information that a
Rijke tube has oscillated with a component at the first overtone (in
this case the octave) comes as a great surprise to me because that would
place the gauze at a *node* of the oscillation, certainly a clue I did
not have before. If it is true it is very surprising.
Leigh