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Re: [Phys-l] sound advice



Of course, it depends on what you've done, and what level will be appreciated. You could:

1. Set up a Rubens' tube.
2. Demonstrate Chladni plates.
3. Use a strobe light synched to a driver to show resonances in strings (and making large wine glasses resonate by running your finger around the edge and then adjusting strobes to illustrate how much the glass is bending is ALWAYS cool).
4. Build an "acoustic laser": http://www.acs.psu.edu/thermoacoustics/refrigeration/laserdemo.htm
5. Demonstrate nodes and antinodes by getting long Al, steel, iron, etc. rods and hold them loosely at one point with your fingers. With a hammer, tap on the end. Depending on where you place your fingers you can allow or suppress various modes. You can show that the modes are primarily longitudinal waves by damping things out with a finger on the end; it's much harder to damp them out by putting a finger along the side of the rod.
6. Demonstrate coupled oscillators by attaching resonators (usually large tuning forks) securely to sounding boxes.
7. Talk about RUS (resonant ultrasound spectroscopy) and its uses in figuring out material parameters in things like Pu.
8. Talk about seismology (impulses, sound channels, dispersion) and how geologists tell what's underground.
9. Talk about "whale talk" and submariners and how sound propagates in the oceans (SOFAR channels, etc.).
10. Discuss the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa and the resulting sounds and atmospheric waves resulting.

Hope some of those might help!
C.O.

/************************************
Down with categorical imperative!
flutzpah@yahoo.com
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----- Original Message ----
From: kyle forinash <kforinas@ius.edu>
To: "phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu" <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 9, 2008 12:43:01 PM
Subject: [Phys-l] sound advice

I'm at the end of teaching a non-major course on the physics of sound
for the first time and I'm running one class short of material. I've
done everything I can think of. Any suggestions for the last class?

Sorry for the pun.

kyle

--
------------------------------------------
'Violence is the last refuge of the
incompetent.'
Issac Asimov

kyle forinash 812-941-2039
kforinas@ius.edu
http://Physics.ius.edu/
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