Bass Tuning Fork

The tuning fork as an object has many uses, as an aid to tuning musical instruments, its presence in school physics lessons as an object of demonstration or as a tool in hearing evaluations. A set of 16 tuning forks were made to investigate the acoustic properties of materials as part of the Materials Library Founder, Zoe Laughlin’s PhD thesis. The three principle factors that influence the production of sound by a tuning fork are the shape of the fork, the density and elastic modulus (a measure of stiffness) of the material from which the fork is made.

Similar to the spruce tuning fork, audible notes can be heard using the pinching technique. The bass tuning fork produces tones higher than the spruce tuning fork (734) and closer to the blued steel tuning fork (1152).