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Natural-frequency splitting of a guitar string caused by a non-uniform magnetic field
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, SSC 327, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-0484, USA feinberg@usc.edu.
Abstract:
A magnet can affect the vibration of the metal strings in a musical instrument. Here it is shown that a magnetic field can cause splitting of a metal guitar string's normally degenerate transverse vibration modes, leading to a beat note in the resulting sound. A distributed-spring model accurately predicts the natural frequencies of a vibrating guitar string in the non-uniform magnetic field.
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