Thursday, March 28, 2013

Gravity-powered xylophone

 














Jeff Goodman got a bunch of friends and neighbors together to build a gravity-powered xylophone. You roll a steel ball down the trough, and as it rolls it strikes a series of tuned steel tubes and plays a little tune. It was an excellent and fun day. The instrument still needs a little fussing, but it mostly works. Thanks, Jeff! Nobody else was going to do this.  And thanks to everyone who helped. In this picture folks are attaching the xylophone tubes to wooden supports. They sit on rings of inner tube so they can vibrate.














 Here are Matt and Jeff using a water level to calculate the slope of the hill.






















Looking up the trough.























Adding pipes. The clipboard has the tune on it.















Adding a section of ramp.























Looking down the trough.















Here's the whole thing. Eventually, we'll move it to Jeff and Margot's holding.

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