source file: mills2.txt
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 04:09:49 -0800

Subject: RE: Sympathetic Vibrations

From: Paul Hahn <Paul-Hahn@library.wustl.edu>

On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, PAULE wrote:
>                   In order to prove this experimentally, you could use 
> magnetic pickups rather than acoustical resonators to determine the 
> amplitude of the vibrations on the string . . .

Below is a message which I sent some days ago, but which apparently
never made it off my node:

*** BEGIN QUOTED-MESSAGE ***
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 09:43:37 -0600 (CST)
To: tuning@ella.mills.edu
Subject: Re: Sympathetic Vibrations

On Wed, 26 Feb 1997, Lydia Ayers wrote:
> >Yes, but tubes present orders of magnitude more surface area to be acted
> >upon by sound pressure than strings do.
> 
> Yes, they do have more surface area, and they could even be said to
> contain their own resonators, since they are hollow.  But, even so,
> it is the air that carries the vibrations which stimulate the 
> sympathetic vibrations, not a sounding board connected to the
> original stimulus and not cables or anything else.

Nobody was questioning that air could transmit vibrations--that's what
sound is, after all.  The original question was _can a string be set
into significant vibrating motion by air vibrations alone?_  Examples
involving tubes, or strings mechanically coupled to soundboards or
other strings, do not help resolve this question.

A simple experiment that _would_ resolve the question is this: sing at
an electric guitar at a pitch matching one of the strings.  Note the
level of the output and compare vs. a gentle pluck.  I'll bet it's
several orders of magnitude (bels) lower.  Surely someone out there has
an electric guitar handy?

--pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote)
       O
      /\             "Do you like to gamble, Eddie?
     -\-\-- o         Gamble money on pool games?"
*** END QUOTED-MESSAGE ***

--pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote)
       O
      /\             "Do you like to gamble, Eddie?
     -\-\-- o         Gamble money on pool games?"

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