Hi all,
I just learned something the other day that is directly
relevent. When I use tuning forks in one of our undergraduate labs
(sound resonance), one should hold the fork not by the handle but one
finger at the base of each prong. The reason being the overtones that
are produced by the fork is truck. The fundamental harmonic damps out
the quickest but that is the one you want so you have to the fork just
as I desribed to reduce the error I just desrcibed. Otherwise, as in
our case the speed of sound will not come out correctly. Hope that
helps. The FFT through a sound card would probably reveal this. Sounds
interesting and another thing to add to my list of things to do in my
copious free time.