June 16- Science

I hope you are as excited as I am to be returning to the regular daily loop. Today's question is a bit of a cross-over question between science and music, so I did have a bit of turmoil coming down to the decision. As you can most certainly tell, I chose to put it under science. Since it was beautiful today, I decided to sit out on my sun porch and listen to music. And not just normally listening to music on a sissy iPod, I mean listening to music on the phonograph. If you've never listened to music on a record player before, you definitely should some time. Anyway, all this was brought on today when I was looking downstairs in my basement and found a container of jazz records. Well, you can bet I popped those guys in there as soon as I could get up the stairs. And as I watched the record spin tunes from the likes of Prima and Brubeck, I began to wonder how it was actually being brought to me. So for my daily question, I ask: How does a phonograph work?







There is an infinity of informational depth that you could get into on the subject of sound, and no one, me especially, likes hearing complexities that I couldn't care less about. So basically, a record is started with a sound. The sound travels down a tube, and makes a part called the diaphragm vibrate. The diaphragm is connected to a stylus, that then pushes down on the new record, at this point made out of wax. The record is on a platform being spun as the imprints are being made on it. Think of it as the childrens' song about bones: The sound is connected to the, diaphragm. The diaphragm's connected to the, stylus. The stylus is connected to the, record. This process makes a piece of wax with tiny little groves all over it. Now, do it in reverse. When you put the wax on a spinning platform, and let the stylus spin slowly down it, the sound is sent down a diaphragm, and out the horn. Then, a contented jazz enthusiast can obsorb the music.
For more info visit: http://www.pbs.org/weta/roughscience/series2/challenges/sound/page3.html