Revision as of 01:33, 27 February 2013

This is Yoo-Yoo (Yo-Yo) Yeh's 250B page

PiezoFlower Garden OR Giant Slinky Squid

Current State

Week 7: PiezoFlower Garden

Additional variations, more soldering of audio jacks, piezo discs hooked together in parallel.

Vases from Paxton Gate coming in tomorrow. Bought a terrarium from Costplus World Market in the meanwhile, and filling it up and blowing bubbles at it! With or without the guitar effects, both have very interesting sounds.

Here is a video of the "garden" so far: PiezoFlower Garden Boom

Jonathan says the low pitch of the flower petals may be related to quarter wavelengths. Maybe I can make a smaller flower and test this out! In any case, here's the latest iteration:

Week 6: Looking for sounds

Acquired 30 additional slinkies/magic springs from Anya. Bought some more of my own. Ordered some online. Of varying sizes and shapes.

Actually building things - Sasha said I could cut up the sheet metal in the lab, and handed me a hot glue gun. I had previously been thinking of plastic or paper leaves/petals. Also lent me a guitar effects pedal. So we'll see what that sounds like!

Metal petals are actually really awesome! And the smiley face sticker is a MUST.

Week 4-5: Egg weeks.

After I shorted my $17 Radio Shack amplifier, Travis mentioned that one could buy cheap headphone amplifiers online. Ordered a Fiio headphone amp for $4, and it is proving exceedingly useful for testing.

Sasha mentioned Helmholtz resonators in class. See previous doodle... I wanted to fan eggshells and make music come from holes in a wall. Still a possibility. Just need some amplification:

That's a condenser microphone inside a hollow eggshell (yes I washed it out first). It sounds really nice, actually. Something like a seashell. That's what it sounds like to be within an egg.  :) I'll have to make a recording.

This week I switched from carrying around a slinky to carrying around a slinky, a piezo disk, audio amplifier, and headphones.

Week 3: Slinky Pianos, Giant Squids

This is the week when I carried a small slinky around with me 24/7, to show anyone who would listen. :) And blew out a RadioShack amplifier.

Going off the "slinky piano" idea, here was iteration 1: slinky piano attempt #1

Then, I think it was Eoin who mentioned the words "steel drum" and there happened to be one upstairs, so here we have a lovely video:

metal slinkies + steel drum = awesome underwater kind of sound

Still have plans to pop a balloon in Packard stairwell one of these days. Stomped down the metal stairs in tap-dancing boots the other day, that was LOUD.

more ideas doodles - John had an idea to pop balloons - well that is difficult - but bubbles pop! And they are easy to regenerate. so:

(doodle here)

but first, I went somewhat slinky crazy.

Week 2

today Sasha let me borrow the small Radio Shack amplifier+speaker and i tried to get my roommates to listen to my heartbeat through a piezoelectric disk. not as good as a stethoscope, but fun. :)

ideas doodles:

Going off the "rain chime", perhaps it could also be possible to have a "slinky piano"? :)

And if you have never been in the stairwell of Packard, I think the stairwell between floors 1 & 2, and 2 & 3, have great potential. Lots of echoes there, and the stairs are made of metal!