Laboratory Exercises for a Non-Major Course in the Physics of Music

物理系的一个主要目标是改进一门面向非理科专业学生的题为《音乐物理学》的专题课程。本课程讨论运动和波的物理学，并调查音乐家和物理学家对相同声音的感知、音阶的构造以及主要乐器分组的物理属性等主题。从历史上看，这门课程一直是一门只有三个简短实验室练习的讲座课程。该项目通过增加每周一次的实验室来显著增强这门课程，该实验室旨在让每个学生更有效地了解物理的本质以及实验和理论之间的相互作用。该实验室还为每个学生提供了对课程中讨论的物理现象更安全、更亲自的熟悉。新设备正在支持各种乐器产生的声音的频谱组成以及作为乐器重要特征的共振性质的实验。这一进展可能会增加非理科专业选修物理课程的人数，并有助于教育部回应日益尖锐的全国性呼吁，即科学系重新关注他们为非理科专业提供的课程。

A major goal of the Department of Physics is the improvement of a topical course for non-science-majors entitled Physics of Music. This course treats the physics of motion and waves and investigates such topics as musicians' and physicists' perceptions of the same sounds, the construction of musical scales, and the physical attributes of the major groupings of musical instruments. Historically, this course has been a lecture course with only three short laboratory exercises. The project is significantly enhancing the course by adding a weekly laboratory designed to acquaint each student more effectively with the nature of physics and the interplay between experiment and theory. The laboratory is also giving each student a more secure, personal familiarity with the physical phenomena discussed in the course. The new equipment is supporting experiments on the spectral composition of the sounds produced by various musical instruments and on the nature of resonance as an important characteristic of musical instruments. This development is likely to increase the number of non-science-majors electing physics courses, and is contributing to the department's response to increasingly strident national calls that science departments give renewed attention to their offerings for non-science-majors.