Tuesday, March 6, 2012

All signs point to my harp actually having less tension on it.  Whew.

From http://liutaiomottola.com/formulae/tension.htm
A few things should be apparent from the formula:
1. Everything else being the same, pitch increases as tension increases;
2. Everything else being the same, tension increases as scale length increases;
3. Everything else being the same, tension increases as unit weight increases, thus a heavier gage string will be under greater tension as a lighter one of the same length tuned to the same note;

This is not tension as in how it feels to play - that is referred to as compliance of the string, and that is the subjective "these strings feel tight and are more difficult to play" feeling the musician gets.

3 comments:

  1. but why does the formula have a 2^2 in the numerator? Shouldnt the denominator be adjusted so there's only one constant?

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    Replies
    1. Formula is Mersenne-Taylor Law? I am still working through where the gravitational constant comes in.

      There's another version here:
      http://www.nrinstruments.demon.co.uk/StrPrim.html

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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