Physics of Music: A hands on approach for teaching spectroscopy

Through the centuries, music has motivated and inspired physicists and mathematicians, from Pythagoras, to Fourier and Sommerfeld. A common theme to this interest in music is found in spectroscopy – loosely speaking, the study of frequencies. In this talk, I will demonstrate some experiments on acoustic spectroscopy from my course, The Physics of Music. These experiments show the connection between sound, music, and modern spectroscopy, one of the most powerful techniques in current research. I argue that by teaching a useful technique for gathering knowledge, one demonstrates more about the scientific method than by teaching various facts about the natural world.