Description
The purpose of the "Do It Better" project was to recreate and enhance a previous in-class project. So I teamed up with someone else who wanted to recreate the Build a Musical Band project. In our original final product, our guitar was a flop. It had a piece of wood, one string, and 2 screws. There was no bottle of hole to amplify the sound, or enough tension to hear it clearly. But in this project, we turned that around. Our new and improved string instrument actually looks like a guitar! It's made of a light material (balsa wood) and has a big hole like a guitar. It sounds like a ukulele but looks like a guitar so we called it a guikulele. We tuned it so it had the right notes, and we had glued down nails as the frets and it went up half a step every fret. When we tighten the strings to make it the right note, the note gets higher. When we loosen it, the note gets lower. When the strings are plucked, the sound waves vibrate the inside of the hole in the guitar and ricochet out so you can hear it. If you pluck with a hard object, like a guitar pick, the sound can also be slightly amplified that way.
Physics Concepts
Wave - Any regularly recurring event (the sound waves repeating the same pattern/note).
Tension - The state of being stretched tight (when the guitar strings are tightened and loosened, the note gets lower and higher)
Frequency - The rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time (when the note of the ring is carried through the air/the frequency is a different amount at every pitch/note)
Wavelength - the distance between the crests (highest point) of a wave
Period - The time needed for one complete cycle of vibration to pass a given point.
Trough - The lowest point on a wave.
Crest - The highest point on a wave.
Reflection
I really liked how our instrument turned out. It was so much better than the last one! I loved working with my partner and he was on it. He even went to the music store to get string holders for the bottom and top of the guitar, and tuning valves. Some challenges we encountered were that we had to start over after making the base of a first attempt because it was too skinny to put a hole, and that the strings would get out of tune after a few strums. Another one that we greatly overcame was the the strings would slip out of the white holder, so we we added screws so the strings would be directed straight through.
The purpose of the "Do It Better" project was to recreate and enhance a previous in-class project. So I teamed up with someone else who wanted to recreate the Build a Musical Band project. In our original final product, our guitar was a flop. It had a piece of wood, one string, and 2 screws. There was no bottle of hole to amplify the sound, or enough tension to hear it clearly. But in this project, we turned that around. Our new and improved string instrument actually looks like a guitar! It's made of a light material (balsa wood) and has a big hole like a guitar. It sounds like a ukulele but looks like a guitar so we called it a guikulele. We tuned it so it had the right notes, and we had glued down nails as the frets and it went up half a step every fret. When we tighten the strings to make it the right note, the note gets higher. When we loosen it, the note gets lower. When the strings are plucked, the sound waves vibrate the inside of the hole in the guitar and ricochet out so you can hear it. If you pluck with a hard object, like a guitar pick, the sound can also be slightly amplified that way.
Physics Concepts
Wave - Any regularly recurring event (the sound waves repeating the same pattern/note).
Tension - The state of being stretched tight (when the guitar strings are tightened and loosened, the note gets lower and higher)
Frequency - The rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time (when the note of the ring is carried through the air/the frequency is a different amount at every pitch/note)
Wavelength - the distance between the crests (highest point) of a wave
Period - The time needed for one complete cycle of vibration to pass a given point.
Trough - The lowest point on a wave.
Crest - The highest point on a wave.
Reflection
I really liked how our instrument turned out. It was so much better than the last one! I loved working with my partner and he was on it. He even went to the music store to get string holders for the bottom and top of the guitar, and tuning valves. Some challenges we encountered were that we had to start over after making the base of a first attempt because it was too skinny to put a hole, and that the strings would get out of tune after a few strums. Another one that we greatly overcame was the the strings would slip out of the white holder, so we we added screws so the strings would be directed straight through.