Question

Your friend, an artist, has been thinking about an interesting way to display a new wind sculpture she has just created. In order to create an aural as well as visual effect, she would like to use the wires needed to hang the sculpture as a sort of a string instrument. She decides that with three wires and some luck, the strings will sound a C-major dyad (C - 262Hz, G - 392 Hz) when the wind blows (note: A dyad is part of a chord.). Her basic design involves attaching a piece of wire from two eye-hooks on the ceiling that are approximately a foot-and-a-half apart and then hanging the 50 pound sculpture from another wire attached to the first wire forming a "y-shaped" arrangement. Your friend tells you that she has been successful in hanging the sculpture but not in "tuning" the sound. Desperate for success, she knows you are taking physics and asks for your help. Before you tackle the analysis, you use your knowledge of waves to gather some more information. You take a sample of the wire back to your lab and measure its linear mass density to be 5.0 g/m. You also determine that wire is some sort of iron or steel from its color. What is your advice?

Answer 1