Diddley Bowie

The second Action Project in Light, Sound, and Time asked us to build a guitar that we could play. My guitar is made out of wood, a tin can, one guitar string, an allen wrench as the nut and nails to hold the guitar together. We learned about sound, how it travels, how fast it is, and where it comes from. We learned about frequency, the pitch of sound, wavelength, and the Doppler effect. I am proud of how my guitar came out. It was really easy to build. If I could do it over again, I would get a thicker piece of wood so that way the screws wouldn’t go through the wood. I would make my string a little tighter, so the pitch would be higher. Overall I enjoyed creating my Diddley bow and below is a sketch of my Bowie, and a real picture of it.

Created by JV Bowie, 2016.

Created by Diddley Bow, 2016.

The wood is the neck of the guitar, the tin can is the sound hole. My tin can is medium sized so it produces a good amount of sound. I have a guitar string, and an allen wrench that acts like the nut. When I pluck the guitar string the vibration goes through the tin can, making sound waves. When I use a slide on my string, the vibrations shorten changing the pitch. The wavelength is the distance from one peak to the next peak. It can also be thought of as of one complete wave cycle. My Diddley bow creates waves every time I play it. My harmonics and wavelength calculations are down below, it also shows the frequency.

                                                                Created by JV Harmonics, 2016.

My guitar string is 13 inches long, and the thickness of the string is 0.042inches. My open note is E. The formula used for the volume of a cylinder was πRxR x H. The approximate frequency of 82.28 Hz, a wavelength of 418.65 cm, and the volume of my can is 47.12cm^3.