singing wine glasses help

[nomnompocky]

Is there a way to make the singing wine glasses project more advanced? My teacher wants a more complicated project and this one still sticks with me no matter what other topics i find. How can this project affect an individual or the community?

[deleted-71417]

Hi,

Here is the Science Buddies Singing Wine Glasses project writeup:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p008.shtml

I believe you can make this project as challenging as you wish by investigating the mathematics of the resonating waves in the wine glasses, I.e. what are the equations that describe the frequency and waveforms of resonance frequencies in the singing wine glasses. Is there more than one resonant frequency per glass and liquid level? If so, how are the resonant frequencies related? Can you discover the formula that defines this? How? The process of answering these questions could lead you quite far into math areas that are advanced for high school students.

This sounds like an interesting subject area. Have fun with it!

Best wishes for a successful project.

Barrett L. Tomlinson

[nomnompocky]

thanks for the advice, can you tell me how this project can help the community or an individual?

[deleted-71296]

Do the project with different sizes of wine glasses which will make different tones.

[deleted-71712]

can you tell me how this project can help the community or an individual?

To answer this, I can think of at least two different things you could discuss:
-- Resonance is important in the design and performance of musical instruments. So if you play an instrument, doing this project could help you better understand how it works and how you could apply your knowledge to learning other instruments or even inventing new ones.
-- Resonance is also important in many other areas of physics and engineering. The math behind resonance in an electrical circuit, for example, is essentially the same as the math describing resonance in a mechanical or acoustical system. So once you understand it in one context, it becomes easier to learn about other resonance phenomena. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance

So in my personal opinion, this is a really useful concept for you to investigate and understand fully because you'll definitely see it again if you continue in science or engineering at the university level. If your teacher specifically wants you to address a societal problem in some way, you could combine this with the need to make the project advanced enough for your grade level and maybe try to build something.

By the way, even if the fact that you're asked to answer this question seems annoying it's actually pretty realistic. Most funding for science (at least in the US) comes from the government, and we usually have to justify our planned work in the same way -- which is overall not a bad thing. If you're curious, here's an example: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/broaderimpacts.pdf

Amanda

[deleted-71360]

On a lighter side, lookup the glass armonica, an invention of Ben Franklin. There is also a CD of music made on one about 20 years ago.

[deleted-71934]

Since this project deals with resonance and harmonics, it is very applicable to the real world and comes into play in many ways which you might not expect. For example, engineers have to design a window of a car, for example, with harmonics and resonance in mind, else the window could possibly break . If you do a little searching on the internet and your local library you will find that this topic has many real world implications.