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    Tamil Atharva Veda - 1 of 4

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    janakiraman
    A conch shell produces tones when blown into due to its resonant frequencies, which are determined by the length of its open-ended acoustic cavity. Previous research has modeled the cavity's spiral shape using an Archimedean spiral to relate its radius to polar angle. By numerically integrating the infinitesimal arc length from this model, the total cavity length can be estimated and used to predict resonance frequencies that closely match experimental measurements. This allows estimating a conch shell's tones from the shape of its acoustic cavity alone.

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    Tamil Atharva Veda - 1 of 4

    Uploaded by

    janakiraman
    307 views2 pages
    A conch shell produces tones when blown into due to its resonant frequencies, which are determined by the length of its open-ended acoustic cavity. Previous research has modeled the cavity's spiral shape using an Archimedean spiral to relate its radius to polar angle. By numerically integrating the infinitesimal arc length from this model, the total cavity length can be estimated and used to predict resonance frequencies that closely match experimental measurements. This allows estimating a conch shell's tones from the shape of its acoustic cavity alone.

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    conch shell acoustics

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    A conch shell produces tones when blown into due to its resonant frequencies, which are determined by the length of its open-ended acoustic cavity. Previous research has modeled the cavity's spiral shape using an Archimedean spiral to relate its radius to polar angle. By numerically integrating the infinitesimal arc length from this model, the total cavity length can be estimated and used to predict resonance frequencies that closely match experimental measurements. This allows estimating a conch shell's tones from the shape of its acoustic cavity alone.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    307 views2 pages

    Tamil Atharva Veda - 1 of 4

    Uploaded by

    janakiraman
    A conch shell produces tones when blown into due to its resonant frequencies, which are determined by the length of its open-ended acoustic cavity. Previous research has modeled the cavity's spiral shape using an Archimedean spiral to relate its radius to polar angle. By numerically integrating the infinitesimal arc length from this model, the total cavity length can be estimated and used to predict resonance frequencies that closely match experimental measurements. This allows estimating a conch shell's tones from the shape of its acoustic cavity alone.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 2

    A conch shell is an open ended cavity.

    There is a 'mouth' end and a 'flair' end like most wind


    instruments. You blow air into the cavity at the mouth end. If you can modulate the air that is blown
    in at a frequency which coincides with one of the resonant frequencies of the cavity, you can
    produce the distinct tones normally associated with conch shells. Modulation of the air is done by
    your lips (I confess to having no idea about how this is done for I've never tried playing a wind
    instrument).

    The resonance frequencies,f, of an open ended cavity are given by

    f=nc2L,

    where n=1,2,3... is the harmonic, c is the speed of sound in air and L is the length of the cavity.
    So, we have all the information we need except the length of the cavity. If we were looking at an
    open ended cylinder, L is just the length measured from one end to the other. For an open ended
    cone, the length has to be measured along the surface and not the axis. The problem is that the
    acoustic cavity of the conch doesn't really follow any simple shapes. So, I did a Google search and it
    turns out there have been a few publications on the acoustics of conch shells. There is an excellent
    conference paper[1] on the spectral analysis of Turbinella pyrum (see Fig. 1), commonly called
    Śaṇkha in India.
    The basic idea of the paper[1] was to model the radius of cross-section of the acoustic cavity of the
    conch shell using an Archimedean spiral. So, if we start measuring the radius of the shell at the
    mouth and move along the axis of the cavity till the flair, the radius can be expressed as

    r=kθ,

    where k is a constant and θ is the polar angle measured in radians. Of course, k has to be
    determined experimentally and may in fact vary between different sections of the shell. Distance
    along the axis, let's call it z, can be expressed as a function of the radius (it turns out to be a
    quadratic polynomial in r in the paper[1]. Now, you can calculate the infinitesimal arc length of the
    cavity as

    dl=dx2+dy2+dz2−−−−−−−−−−−−−√,

    where x=rcosθ, y=rsinθ and z=z(r). You can integrate this numerically to get the total
    length.

    The next trick is to 'straighten' out the spiral (like a cone). For a given arc length, you can find out the
    'size' of the cavity along the major and minor axes(x and y). At a certain arc length, one of these
    measures will show a sudden increase. This point can be chosen as the L for our spiral cavity. It has
    been demonstrated in [1] that the resonance frequencies obtained by this procedure are quite close
    to those measured experimentally (The first harmonic was roughly 440 Hz (L=39cm) for the
    conch shell they considered).

    So, as long as you are able to approximate the "straightened out" length of the acoustic cavity of a
    conch shell, you'll have a reliable estimate of its resonance frequencies.

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