Flute Lab Report Jennifer & Mandy 9.1

Introduction Objective: To find out if the length of the flute affects the loudness of the sound from the flute and how it affects it Hypothesis: I predict that the shortest flute is going to be the loudest, as from our research we found out that the shorter the air column is, the faster the vibrations will be. The faster the vibrations are, the higher the pitch will also be. And, a higher pitch means a louder sound. Variables: Independent: The length of the flute (each is 1cm longer; starting from 30cm), the length of the holes to the end that is closed with the cork, the pressure of air blown in each trial during the experiment time, the holes’ placing in its placement line, the direction of the reamer when it was drilled in to make the holes Dependent: The loudness (in decibels) of the flutes Controlled: Type of instrument, type of the pipe used for the flute, size of the holes, the length of the hole’s placement line from each other, length of the holes from the end of the flute that is open (without cork), the type of stopper use (cork), type of cork use (the one for bottles), size of cork, diameter of the resonance chamber, thickness of the pipe, the room when testing/experimenting, the laptop used for testing the sound sensor, the distance of the sound sensor to the flute, the person who blows the flute when testing,

Data Collection and Recording Data of the Loudest Point Created By Each Flute During the Experiment Time Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Average Flute 1 (32cm) 88.58 decibels 89.55 decibels 90.00 decibels 89.376666666666667 decibels Flute 2 (31cm) 89.95 decibels 89.47 decibels 89.806666666666667 decibels Flute 3 (30cm) 88.095 decibels 89.20 decibels 88.20 decibels 88.498333333333333

Data Presentation Loudest Point of Flutes - Trial One # of loudness (in decibel) 32cm flute 31cm flute 30cm flute # of flutes

Data Presentation Loudest Point of Flutes - Trial Two # of loudness (in decibel) 32cm flute 31cm flute 30cm flute # of flutes

Data Presentation Loudest Point of Flutes - Trial Three # of loudness (in decibel) 32cm flute 31cm flute 30cm flute # of flutes

Data Presentation Loudest Point of Flutes – Total Average # of loudness (in decibel) # of flutes

Data Explanation From the result, we can see that the loudness of the flutes aren’t so different. They are usually around 88-90 decibels. This means that the length of the flute doesn’t really affect the loudness of the sound produced by the flute. However, we can also see from the result that the medium-length flute is the one that usually scores the loudest. This doesn’t suit the theory that we found during the research where the shorter the air column is, the louder the sound produced. Therefore, it can be concluded that there were other factors that affected the loudness of the sound produced by the flute during the experiment time.

Data Evaluation The data obtained from the experiment isn’t reliable, as the flutes were blown by human. Even though the human who blew the flutes was told to blow as hard as the person could, the pressure of the air blown is surely to be different. Due to this, the outcome of the experiment is affected. Especially because the length of the flutes aren’t so much different (only 1cm different each), this factor has become a major factor that affects the result of the experiment. The results from the 3 trials done wasn’t consistent, which also proves that the result obtained from the experiment isn’t reliable. We can see this clearly from the result of the 32cm flute that jumps around: in the first trial= 88.6 decibels, the second trial= 89.6 decibels, and the third trial= 90 decibels. The result of the experiment isn’t reliable because the results obtained from the experiment were rounded up to the nearest hundredth, except for one that is rounded to the nearest thousandth, and that makes the data rounding inconsistent too. The result obtained from the experiment doesn’t show any pattern too. It only showed us that the loudness of the flute is around 88-90 decibels and that the medium-length flute is usually the one that produced the loudest sound, which most probably is also because that it was usually played the with the highest amount of air pressure blown.

Conclusion From the experiment, we could not fully answer the objective. What we found out after the experiment is only that the length of the flute doesn’t really affect the loudness of the sound produced. How much the length of the flute affects the loudness of the sound produced, and if the theory that says, “the shorter the air column is, the higher the vibrations will be. The higher the vibrations are, the higher pitch it will be. And a higher pitch means a louder sound” is right or not could not be answered.

Appendix Loudest point of flute 1 (32cm) – First Trial

Appendix Loudest point of flute 1 (32cm) – Second Trial

Appendix Loudest point of flute 1 (32cm) – Third Trial

Appendix Loudest point of flute 2 (31cm) – First Trial

Appendix Loudest point of flute 2 (31cm) – Second Trial

Appendix Loudest point of flute 2 (31cm) – Third Trial

Appendix Loudest point of flute 3 (30cm) – First Trial

Appendix Loudest point of flute 3 (30cm) – Second Trial

Appendix Loudest point of flute 3 (30cm) – Third Trial