Physics and Music

A few years ago I wrote a number of applets for UCB's Physics C21/Letters and Sciences C70W course Physics and Music. Each applet demonstrates some concept we were teaching.

Each of the below opens in a new window and requires Java 1.6 or later. These are hacks since I had only a couple of days to get each of them working from the concept. Also, the jar files work both as applets and as stand alone applications if you wish to download one to your computer. I studied Paul Falstad's physics and math applets for programming ideas. Some of the startup code is modelled after his. I used the NetBeans IDE.

These require Java 1.6 or later.

	HarmonicSum: Add up three harmonics and see the resulting superposition. [.jar]		PressureWaves: Shows the pressure wave in a penny whistle. [.jar]
	ReverbAndEcho: Generate sound pulses with various delays to show the effect of reverb and echo. [.jar]		Recording: Demonstrates recording of sound onto a moving surface. [.jar]
	WaterAmp: Water analogy to an electronic amplifier. Includes clipping. [.jar]		SineSample: Shows the Fourier spectrum of a sampled sine wave and why the spectral peaks repeat. [.jar]

The following is a Quicktime movie I made for the class to demonstrate superposition.

sawtooth.mov: Demonstrates the summation of a series of sine waves to make a sawtooth waves. Includes sound. (24MB)