Musical Instrument Project

 

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Summary: Various different types of waves can affect the world in different ways. Like how sound waves can make things audible to the human ear, or how seismic waves can make the ground shake greatly. Even though you can't see them, this applies to electromagnetic waves as well, like how a UV ray can cause a person to get a sunburn, or how X-rays allow us to see inside of our own bodies. Almost, if not all waves can effect the world or the things on it in various ways.


Backward-Looking
In school I personally learned about sounds and waves beforehand, but did not know as much on the topic as I would have liked, meaning that I learned a lot about the topic by working on the project. Specifically things like: the different ways to measure the wavelength and amplitude of different kinds of waves. I gained a lot of knowledge by working on the project.

Inward-Looking
The thing I like the most about this project is the fact that it is flowing with creativity, showing how my team and I can take a task as simple as creating an instrument and making something incredible out of it. The one thing I dislike about the project is that some of the decorations on the instrument itself are lack luster, specifically the 'ears' on the side of the instrument look really bad and poorly done.

Outward-Looking
If I were to give this project a grade I would give it a A, because the project can play any note at a variety of pitches, and not to mention it doesn't take any real skill to play, along with its uniqueness. We made and incredibly interesting design for our instrument, and decided to go with a design that was simple but also really cool. While some parts of the instrument don't look that good, it mostly does as all of the other pieces of the instrument are cool references.

Forward-Looking
The one goal I would like to set for next time is:

When designing a unique solution to a problem, and my team and I hit a roadblock, than rather than doing a small and boring fix, we make it so that the solution fits into the project really well. I say that this is my goal because in our project we came to the roadblock of the sound not being very audible. So we came up with a quick fix to our problem, which was cutting holes in the side. I wish we came up with a greater solution next time.

Sound

Audio Database By: Aarkentechnologies 

Summary: Sound is a mechanical wave that allows us to hear various noises. Sound is a longitudinal wave meaning instead of going up and down, it compresses, and decompresses. Sound is also a type of energy, meaning that it can be used to manipulate matter, different sounds exist because of the fact that they manipulate the air around it. The frequency of the wave is directly related to the pitch of the sound, meaning that the louder the sound, the larger the frequency.

SP5: Using mathematics and computational thinking
We had to use various different types of math to find out about different properties of a wave. We had to do various measurements on things like the distances between two troughs, and the distance from a trough to the top of the wave. We used these measurements to figure out things about the wave, like its frequency, its wavelength, and the amplitude of the waves we measured.

Energy and Matter
Sound relates to energy and matter, because sound itself is a form of energy, you can use sound and the vibrations that it creates to manipulate matter. Matter is also related to sound because it is a mechanical wave, meaning that it cannot exist without matter, because it has to travel through matter to exist, specifically travelling through matter in the form of vibrations.

Waves

2 fixas By: Felipe Tomazoni

Summary: A wave is how various things in the universe move, it's the type of form that something takes. There are two basic types of wave: Electromagnetic, and Mechanical, with the main difference between them being how Mechanical waves need a medium, or matter to move, however an Electromagnetic wave can move through nothingness, also known as vacuum. Then there are two more sub types of waves, Transverse, and Longitudinal waves, which have to do with how the wave moves. A transversal wave goes up and down in humps and troughs, while a longitudinal wave compresses at different parts.

SP3: Planning and carrying out investigations
In order to figure out how sound moves and reacts to different states of matter, we did a lab that involved hitting tuning forks against a table and touching it to different things to see how the items would react. During the investigation, we found that the vibrating tuning fork would make water jump, and when a ball on a string would touch it, the ball would bounce away, no matter how softly we touched it with the vibrating fork.

XCC: Energy and Matter

Lots of different forms of energy travel as waves, such as sound energy, which travels as a longitudinal wave. Matter is needed for the existence of mechanical waves, which need a matter as a medium that they can pass through. Sound is a prime example of this as it can only travel through matter and cannot exist in a vacuum, and it is a type of energy, meaning that energy and matter are incredibly important to the existence of waves. 

What effect can very loud music have on your hearing?

Anatomy of the Human Ear By: Dan Pickard

When loud noises enter your ear they are quite violent vibrations entering your ear, which can cause a variety of problems. When entering your eardrum, the violent vibrations of sound can cause your eardrum to shake so violently that it can rip or break, which can be as bad to cause a person to go deaf. If the violent noise makes it to the cochlea, it can cause the hair cells on the inside to shake violently, which can cause the tips to break off, which means they will constantly be emitting electric pulses to your brain confusing it on whether you're supposed to be hearing something or not, making a ringing noise in your ear, which can last from 1 day to the rest of your life. While some loud noises are okay, others will cause damage to your ear that may be permanent and life hindering.

Roller Coaster Project

Summary: In physics there are various parts that allow the universe to function the way it is supposed to. Energy, which is how everything in the universe is powered, allowing for things like movement. There is force, which uses energy to push or pull an object into various different positions. Then there is motion, which is when both energy and force are put together to allow an object to change positions.

Backward-Looking
In or out of school I have never done a kind of work that needs as much knowledge as this one, where the only limitations are the requisites and your budget, and it has to be fully functional .  With little limitations it allows the creativity to run wild, creating something that you can feel attached to unlike most other projects where you just follow the guidelines and your done, with the only drawback being, the crazier the project, the harder the calculations.

Inward-Looking
The thing I like the most about this project is the fact that it is flowing with creativity, showing how my mind works and calculates, and not how it reacts to various tasks. The one thing I dislike about the project is that some of the theme behind our roller coaster is kind of bad, most of our ideas were thought up before we chose our theme, so we built our the around the roller coaster and not the other way around.

Outward-Looking
If I were to give this project a grade I would give it a A-, because there was a lack of thought involved with some parts of the project. Rather than making an interesting roller coaster we decided that we would go with a much, much simpler design than what was necessary . We then came up with various reasons that the organism would evolve to be this way.

Forward-Looking
The one goal I would like to set for next time is:

rather than impeding the final outcome of the project by choosing what a simpler design, then an interesting one. I will look at my capabilities  first, then make decisions based off of that, rather than basic abilities. Allowing me to be more efficient and have a better work ethic to make a better project, and enjoying it along the way.

Law of the Conservation of Energy

Summary: The law of the conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.. Similar to the law of the conservation of mass, it states that energy can only be transformed. Meaning that when a ball rolls down a hill, the potential energy of the ball isn't destroyed, and then replaced with newly made kinetic energy, but rather the potential energy is transforming into kinetic energy, but some of the energy is transferred to the air, meaning that the ball would not land in a completely proportionate place to how much potential energy it had.

SP2: Developing and using models:
We made small models of roller coasters in class to demonstrate Newton's laws of motion, and other points where parts of physics come into play, such as where on the roller coaster is the kinetic energy the lowest, or where is it the highest. It also allowed us to demonstrate various relationships, like the steepness of a hill to the acceleration, or the friction and the velocity.

XCC: Energy and Matter
The law of the conservation of energy shows how energy cannot be created or destroyed, creating the backbone for a system that doesn't rely of creating or destroying energy, but rather transforming it. Because energy is transformed rather than created or destroyed, it opens up a lot of options on how we can use energy to help us in everyday life. Like turning the mechanical energy of a motor into kinetic energy from the revolutions of a car's wheel.

Energy

Summary: Energy is how we measure the work that has to be placed on an object to do various things, such as move, or heat something up. There are many different types of energy, one of which is kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is the energy of motion, meaning when something is moving, the type of energy used is kinetic. But before kinetic energy can be put into use, it will be stored as potential energy, which is the energy something could possibly have in its position. Due to the law of the conservation of energy, it cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.

SP4: Analyzing and interpreting data

This week in class we took a look a various different graphs, of how things like acceleration and energy change over time in specific situations. Like how the kinetic energy of a ball would stay the same until it started to slow down. after we put the data on the graphs, we came to the conclusion that the kinetic energy was being converted into another type of energy. We also saw that at the begging of the situation the potential energy was high, but got lower and lower as the ball moved, it was the exact inverse of the kinetic energy, meaning that it was being transformed into kinetic energy.

 

XCC:Energy and Matter

Due to the law of the conservation of energy, it cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed, meaning that if a ball started on the top of a ramp and rolled down, then the potential energy that the ball had on the top of the ramp was being transformed. Because the rolling the ball would be considered a form of movement, the potential energy of the ball is being turned into kinetic energy. This is true when converting all types of energy into one another.