My daughter, Lily, who is 17 years old, recently completed the following short documentary on our xylophone project. This was a a final project for her 11th grade Physics class, and while it doesn’t have all of the details in the other blog posts, I think it turned out quite nice and is a great introduction to our project.
Also, here is the paper she wrote, which has a bit more info.
It’s been some time since I’ve checked, but I’ve enjoyed hearing from a few intrepid folks who are building their own instruments! Hope my blog has helped spread the love 🙂
Recently, I got a request for the code that I used. I’ve been a bit reluctant to post that because, frankly, it is a bit messy (understatement). Also, my brain is a bit atrophied, and I without a fair amount of effort, I’m not sure I can remember the exact calling sequence. Wish I would have cleaned this up and documented while it was fresh…sigh.
However, if you are willing to dig in a bit, below is a zip file with the various functions that I used. This is mostly Zhao’s code with a little wrapping by me. What might help to get you started is a file called COMMANDS.m that contains what is essentially my diary of tests as I moved along. Buried in this are examples of how to run the various functions.
As always, best of luck to you brave souls who are may try to use this mess of software. I enjoy hearing from folks around the world, so please drop me a note and some photos if you get a chance.
May 5, 2023
A few have asked for the code to analyze the bars. Please see the comments section of this site (Re: to Anton) for caveats related to this. Hope it is useful to someone 🙂
Hey, we submitted our xylophone to the magazine and guess what? They put it in the magazine! Jack and I were stoked! I sent a bunch of photos and did a phone interview and the crafted the story. A scan of the article is below. The only disappointment was that they didn’t include a link to this site – still trying to get the word out 🙂
