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3.2
Overtones: The Harmonic
Series
3.2.1
Acoustics of Sound: Definition and Acoustic Guitar Example
Acoustics is the study of sound and its transmission.
When you pluck a string of an acoustic guitar to initiate a tone, here’s what happens:
- The string vibrates really fast. Hundreds of times per second. So fast that your eye can’t follow the movement.
- The vibrating string connects to the body of the guitar via the bridge. This enables the vibrating string to set the body of the guitar flexing back and forth at the same frequency (number of vibrations per second) as the vibrating string.
- When the guitar body flexes one way, it compresses the air molecules that surround it (compression). When it flexes the other way, the air pressure drops (rarefaction). As the guitar body flexes back and forth, the compression and rarefaction of the surrounding air particles repeats itself over and over. And over and over. Really fast.