Sound Waves from Space

THE DIDDLEY BOW

I’m on my second unit for light, sound and time. In this unit we focused heavily on sound. My classmates and I learned the anatomy of the eye, the Doppler effect, and science principles like frequency and wavelength. For a field experience, we went to the Chicago Music Exchange for our external investigation. There we got to ask questions about how sound travels through instruments. This was a smooth transition into our action project where we built our own diddley bows.

A diddley bow is a one stringed guitar made with a plank of wood serving as the neck, a metal can serving as a sound hole, a guitar string, a battery that serves as the bridge.

Diddley Bow, MW, 2019

It took me about 2 hours to create my diddley bow. I started with my board of wood and a tin can with a hole in the middle so the string can go through. The first thing I had to do was secure my sound hole. I did this by adding a screw on each side of the can. Then I had to wrap a portion of my string around the furthest screw. After that, I added another screw on the other end of the neck, then wrapped the other side of the string around to create as much tension as possible, this’ll create a cleaner sound. I also had to be careful not to break the string by making it too tight. The final step is to slide the bridge in on the side without the can as far as possible. 

My string thickness- .02inches

When it’s played, the stings makes vibrations, the vibrations travel from the string to the air in order for us to hear the sound. We can change the way it sounds by four different ways-

1- The length of the string

2- Thickness of the string 

3- Tension of the string

4- The string material

My diddley bow-

Diddley bow, MW 2019

Diddley bow (2), MW, 2019

DB Calculations, 2019, MW

Harmonics, MW, 2019

The harmonic waves are waves with frequencies. In order for the wave to be calculated, I had to find the frequency, which I did above.