Music Project Ideas

Classical Music and Cognitive Tasks *
Does listening to classical music help or hinder concentration and performance on cognitive tasks? You'll need help from a teacher to design two short, age-appropriate worksheet tests for this experiment. The tests should be of equal difficulty. You'll also need the cooperation of several additional classroom teachers in order to test enough students (at least 50–100, see the Science Buddies resource: How Many Participants Do I Need?). Half… Read more

Correlation Between Relative Pitch and Age, Gender, or Musical Background
Here's an interesting way to get some music into your science fair project. What predictions would you make about people with relative pitch? Read more

Don't You Fret! Standing Waves on a Guitar
In this project, you'll investigate the physics of standing waves on guitar strings. You'll learn about the different modes (i.e., patterns) of vibration that can be produced on a string, and you'll figure out how to produce the various modes by lightly touching the string at just the right place while you pick the string. This technique is called playing harmonics on the string. By the way, we chose a guitar for this project, but you can do the… Read more

Guitar Fundamentals: Wavelength, Frequency, & Speed
This is a rockin' project for guitarists with an interest in the physics behind the music. Have you ever wondered why the pitch of the note changes when you fret the string? You can find out for yourself with this project on the fundamental physics of stringed instruments. Read more

How to Make a Guitar Sing
This is a great project for a musician who is interested in the physics of stringed instruments. If you've every played an acoustic guitar, you may have noticed that picking a single string can make one or more of the other (unpicked) strings vibrate. When this happens, it's called sympathetic vibration. What intervals lead to the strongest sympathetic vibrations? Find out for yourself with this project. Read more