Why do some metals ring when struck while others don’t?
In: Physics
It also has to do with how the metal is being held/mounted. For example if you hold a long metal rod in the middle and then hit it, it will usually ring pretty well. But if you move your hand away from the middle a bit you’ll notice it won’t ring as well. This is because the waves traveling though the material wants to be split into perfect fractions (1/2, 1/4…) and in the engineering world we like call these points nodes. By holding the rod somewhere that isn’t a node you will be making the materials waves decay much faster or in other words it won’t ring very well.
Theres more to it then just that, but it would take forever to talk about all the different ways something can vibrate. So I’ll just leave it at that.
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