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The Physics Teacher -- September 2011 -- Volume 49, Issue 6, pp. 360

A Simple Experiment to Explore Standing Waves in a Flexible Corrugated Sound Tube

Maria Eva Amorim1, Teresa Delmira Sousa1, P. Simeão Carvalho1, and Adriano Sampaioe Sousa2

1IFIMUP, Departamento de Física e Astronomia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
2Escola Secundária de Fontes Pereira de Melo, Porto, Portugal

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Sound tubes, pipes, and singing rods are used as musical instruments and as toys to perform amusing experiments. In particular, corrugated tubes present unique characteristics with respect to the sounds they can produce; that is why they have been studied so intensively, both at theoretical and experimental levels.1–4 Experimental studies usually involve expensive and sophisticated equipment that is out of reach of school laboratory facilities.3–6 In this paper we show how to investigate quantitatively the sounds produced by a flexible sound tube corrugated on the inside by using educational equipment readily available in school laboratories, such as the oscilloscope, the microphone, the anemometer, and the air pump. We show that it is possible for students to study the discontinuous spectrum of sounds produced by a flexible corrugated tube and go even further, computing the speed of sound in air with a simple experimental procedure.

© 2011 American Association of Physics Teachers

Article Outline

  1. Theory
  2. Experimental procedure and results
  3. Conclusions

KEYWORDS and PACS

PACS

  • 01.50.Pa

    Laboratory experiments and apparatus

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0031-921X (print)  

ARTICLE DATA


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