Whistling Tea Kettles, Train Whistles, and Organ Pipes

Abstract

The object on the right-hand side of Fig. 1 is the whistling mechanism of an old-fashioned tea kettle. This started me thinking about similar devices in which a thin blade of air strikes a sharp wedge and a resonator is used to pick out specific frequencies. This note tells how I went about using the frequency spectrum application on a smartphone to learn more about these systems. This would seem to be a good line of small-scale research that would appeal to the introductory physics student who is searching for a science fair project.