[CAUT] inharmonicity in piano wire

[Elwood Doss]

I believe that it's due to the fact that the nodes of the vibrating
partials of a string have width, i.e., at the node the string will not
vibrate the thickness of the string.  When a wind instrument is vibrated
by the lips, reed, etc., once the player vibrates the air, the nodes
have no width to them like they do in a string.  That would cause the
string length of each partial to be shorter by the diameter of the
string and be sharper than they theoretically should.  Food for thought!
Joy!
Elwood

-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
Zeno Wood
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 10:46 AM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] inharmonicity in piano wire

Give him a copy of that article on p. 16 in the current Journal -
Determining the Modulus of Elasticity of Piano Strings etc. etc.  He
goes into an explanation of inharmonicity and it's heavy on the math,
so it might make your faculty member happy!

Regards,
Zeno Wood

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:33 AM,  <reggaepass at aol.com> wrote:
> List,
> I just received a query from a science faculty member at the art
institute
> where I work.  He asks how can it be that partials of piano wire are
sharp
> of what they "should" be?  I told him that my very pedestrian
understanding
> is that this phenomenon is due to the high tension of piano wire up to
> pitch, but that is just me repeating what I have heard "somewhere."
Is this
> response even close to being correct?  Any further clarification as to
why
> this is would be much appreciated all the way around.
> Thanks,
> Alan Eder
> CalArts
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