How long does a tuning fork ring?
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - 13:40
in Physics & Chemistry
From the wooden bars in a xylophone or the head of a drum, to the strings and sound box of a guitar or violin, musical instruments are the most familiar examples of mechanical resonators. The actual mechanical vibrations of these instruments create acoustic waves that we hear as sound. The purity of the emitted tone is intimately related to the decay of the vibration amplitude, that is, the mechanical losses of the system. A figure of merit for mechanical losses is the quality factor, simply called 'Q,' which describes the number of oscillations before the amplitude has decayed to a minute fraction of its starting value. The larger Q, the purer the tone and the longer the system will vibrate before the sound damps out...