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  • Primitive Acoustics December 20, 2014 at 8:48pm

    When I Googled resonance boxes and tuning forks I was amazed at how much information was available on this experiment.  I would go with the Baltic Birch plywood from the local craft store for $5.00.

    • Ron "Oily" Sprague > Primitive Acoustics December 21, 2014 at 7:32pm
      Baltic birch is good. Old Harmony gits were made from it, and many high end speaker and amp cabinets use it.
      • DavidKent > Ron "Oily" Sprague December 21, 2014 at 8:46pm

        Thanks Ron.  I bought some today.  Now, the trick is to make a square (right angle), reasonably strong box with my rather limited carpentry skills.

        • Ron "Oily" Sprague > DavidKent December 21, 2014 at 10:34pm
          David,

          With patience and a coping saw, you can make finger jointed boxes. Or you can just butt join them by gluing them together, using a right angle square and a rubber band. There are also right angle and 4-corner strap clamps available at Lowes and Home Depot that can get you, ahem, squared away.
  • gary herget December 20, 2014 at 8:16pm

    The boxes pictured appear to be a laminated material. You can buy buy birch laminate at most big box, hardware stores. Birch is a good sound wood. As for dimensions it's hard to estimate, you could maybe figure something out using the dimension of the fork in comparison to the box. Not alot to go on but might get you started.

  • Ron "Oily" Sprague December 20, 2014 at 8:12pm
    You can build them from plywood. And as a physicist / teacher of physics, you know they will work, if they are constructed correctly. But they are normally built from hardwoods, typically traditional tonewoods like maple, spruce, cedar and mahogany. As a physicist / teacher of physics, you know why hardwoods should work better.

    The ones in your link are built from either fir or maple. It's really the size and wall thickness of the boxes that are important, not necessarily the material. You could even do the resonance experiment using different lengths and thicknesses of PVC pipe. Wine glasses filled with water, or empty soft drink or beer bottles, are classic resonance boxes, too.


    And this was a Kewl high school physics link:
    http://kellerphysics.com/acoustics/Lapp.pdf
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