Waves That Rock

Sound waves are a beautiful thing.

As I was playing melodious vibrations on my guitar in both a spacious room and a hallway I suddenly thought of physics-particularly the resonance and acoustics of the instrument and amp.

First resonance: As I was tuning the last two strings of the instrument their frequencies began matching and I noticed as I hit one string the other string began to vibrate as well. The two strings had a resounding effect that made the two strings sound more full than if they were each played separately. I took this to be resonance because the forced vibration I placed on the first string matched up with the natural frequency of the next string and they both began to vibrate creating larger amplitudes.

Second acoustics: As I mentioned earlier, I played in both a hallway and a spacious room. In the spacious room there was absorbent materials such as a couch and carpet on the far wall across from me. These two absorbent objects made the music I was making lesser in volume. On the contrary, in the hallway there were only walls and a hardwood floor which made the sound reflect a lot more and because of all those reflections it created reverberations. I will admit the guitar sounded way cooler in the hallway than in the room because of the acoustics.