Vibration frequency can be used to determine an unknown mass

摘要

Tuning forks are widely used in classroom demon-strations because they are a high-quality resonantsystem. When triggered, the free oscillations in atuning fork have a long decay time. The sound radi-ated by the tuning fork, the forced oscillation ofa tuning fork and the transient process have beenstudied previously [1, 2]. In the Third Asian PhysicsOlympiad one of the major experimental problemswas to measure the free frequency of a tuning forkas a function of added mass near the extreme endof each prong using a strobe. Here I describe the use of