IOP Physics Education Phys. Educ. 53 P A P ER Phys. Educ. 53 (2018) 045004 (7pp) iopscience.org/ped 2018 Amplitude, frequency, and timbre © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd with the French horn PHEDA7 Nicholas Konz1 and Michael J Ruiz2 045004 1 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, United States of America N Konz and M J Ruiz 2 Department of Physics, University of North Carolina at Asheville, Asheville, NC 28804, United States of America Amplitude, frequency, and timbre with the French horn E-mail:
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[email protected] Printed in the UK Abstract The French horn is used to introduce the three basic properties of periodic PED waves: amplitude, frequency, and waveform. These features relate to the perceptual characteristics of loudness, pitch, and timbre encountered in everyday language. Visualizations are provided in the form of oscilloscope 10.1088/1361-6552/aabbc1 screenshots, spectrograms, and Fourier spectra to illustrate the physics. Introductory students will find the musical relevance interesting as they experience a real-world application of physics. Demonstrations playing 1361-6552 the French horn are provided in an accompanying video (Ruiz 2018 Video: Amplitude, frequency, and timbre with the French horn http://mjtruiz.com/ Published ped/horn/). 7 Background The French horn Students in introductory physics courses learn The French horn, often just called ‘the horn’, is a 4 about amplitude, frequency, and harmonics of member of the brass family of wind instruments. periodic waves on strings and pipes [1, 2]. On an It is made out of long, coiled up brass tubing that oscilloscope, the amplitude is the maximum ver- ‘flares out’ into a bell at the end.