Education Technology

Science: Forensics Case 3 - Name That Tune: Matching musical tones through waveform analysis

by Texas Instruments

Overview

In this activity, students analyze sound waves to calculate the frequency or pitch of musical notes. They use a Microphone to detect the waveform of a musical note. Students calculate the frequency of a musical note from the period of its waveform and use this knowledge to identify the musical notes that make up the combination to a safe.

Key Steps

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    Students make graphs of musical notes to catch a thief who cracked the sound-based combination of the safe containing valuable jewels. This requires finding the period of the waveforms from the graphs and then calculating the frequency of each note.