The most challenging part of the experiment was to define the independent variable, the dependent variable, and the control variables. I think the explanation of the choices of variables was not really clear. I spend pretty much time deciding my variables in order to fit the task. The instructions should work on the clarification of the changing in variables. The easiest part was to make the musical instrument. My musical instrument is very easy to build that only requires the different amount of water filled in several glasses. The tone was very easy to define and the sound worked very well and clear.
Before I started building my instrument, I looked at various videos on making easy handmade instruments. One of the videos inspired me to make my instrument, which is the singing water glass scale. When I was watching the video playing the instrument, I thought it was a very cool instrument and the materials required were very easy to get.
In the beginning, I was trying different materials of the container but I found out that other materials except for the glass all worked not very well. I’ve tried materials such as Yakult bottle, water bottle, and metal cup but the tone did not really change whether I increase or decrease the amount of water. The differences of different tones were hard to identify and be measured by the tuner. The result was that the beaker worked the best. I then tried using different sizes of the beaker instead of different materials. In my experiment, I also found out that the pitch changes very easily with only a little change in the amount of water. If I had a chance to redo my experiment, I would change my independent variable which is the amount of water. I would increase 10 ml of water each time instead of increase 50 ml each time. In that way, I can observe how much water is required to increase one pitch or two.
I decided to make the singing water glass scale because I thought it would be easy to be a successful building and I found out that it was easy to make. Additionally, I thought that the clinking sound of the tapping glass would be very clear and easy to hear throughout the class, the final product worked very well. I don’t play any percussion instrument, I play string instruments such as the piano and the guitar. I thought this is a cool experience for me to try to make a percussion instrument and play around with it.
