Photo by Alan Magayne-Roshak

Chuck Wimpee

You can hear the difference between a flute and a violin, but can you see it? Can Beethoven be played on PVC pipes? Experience these musical phenomena firsthand at this month’s Science Bag presentation at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM).

In this month’s season-opener of the interactive lecture series, Chuck Wimpee, associate professor of biology, uses his test tubes for something other than growing bacteria. Wimpee, who is also a finger-style guitarist, demonstrates the physical principles that govern musical acoustics in “Good Vibrations: The Science of Music.”

The show is presented on campus every Friday in November at 8 p.m., with a Sunday matinee on Nov. 15 at 2 p.m.

All musical instruments create sound in the same way, says Wimpee, whether it’s produced from a string, wind or percussion instrument. “It’s all about frequency of vibration – a vibrating string, reed or column of air.”

He demonstrates this in a variety of ways, including using test tubes to illustrate the relationship between the length of an air column and the pitch of a note.

So why does an ‘A’ note on a violin sound so different when it is played in the same pitch on a flute, piano or tuba? Using an oscilloscope, Wimpee will transform the audible into the visual to explain the concept of tone color.

Learn how various kinds of instruments create musical notes when Wimpee stretches a rope completely across the room to show the relationship between tension, length, weight and the frequency of vibration in string instruments. His objects of choice to illustrate brass instruments range from a cow horn to a conch shell; for explaining how reed instruments work, he employs soda straws.

The Science Bag presentations are held in room 137 of the Physics Building, on the corner of Kenwood Boulevard and Cramer Street. The public is welcome to the free presentations, which are for the curious, ages 8 and up.