Making Connections to Waves and Harmonic Motion with Sound and Music in the Secondary Classroom

Students in introductory physics courses, especially in the secondary education setting, can struggle to connect the principles of simple harmonic motion, such as pendula and spring oscillators, to more advanced concepts such as interference, resonance, harmonics, and standing waves. I present several hands-on activities which work to bridge this gap by using sound and music to make the more advanced ideas more accessible. Included activities involve a standing wave generator, a pendulum device set up to correspond to common consonant and dissonant intervals in music, an acoustic analog to the Michelson interferometer, and tools to integrate the resonances of musical instruments into the discussion of mechanical waves. The presentation will include lesson plan outlines and instructions for building and using the physical devices.