Bowed violin string in slow motion
Why Physics Stack Exchange recommends it
Physics Stack Exchange users link it as a visual reference for Helmholtz motion and for how a string's real motion is a travelling kink rather than a smooth sinusoid.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2019 to 2025.
What it is
A short slow-motion recording of a bowed violin string showing the Helmholtz corner, a sharp kink that travels back and forth along the string as the bow sticks and slips. It is a plain demonstration clip posted by the ViolinB0W channel, with no narration beyond a one-line description.
What people said
Cites Phy · 2019-09 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Do string instruments really create standing waves or not?”
I have seen similar [LINK] questions regarding this but containing answers that somewhat disagree with each other which makes it hard for me to understand this. My question is mainly about when plucking a string instrument at the end side of it , not in the middle. From several slowmotion videos, including this one [LINK] and this one [this video] , I can see that this creates a single propagating wave that reflects back and forth. If there is no periodic plucking, there is no way that this single propagating wave would interfere with itself to produce standing waves and thus harmonics. And yet, I keep reading that plucking a string instrument (once) would produce (a mixture of) harmonics. How is
Cites user121330 · 2024-01 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Why does the aggressively bowed string go sharp?”
A vibrating string with fixed endpoints, such as on my fiddle, may be bowed (see Helmholtz motion [this video] , see stick and slip [LINK] ) with very little to a certain amount of pressure and proximity to the bridge (the combination hereafter abbreviated as amplitude) with un-noticeable change in pitch before beginning to sound sharp (more amplitude causes higher frequency). My suspicion was that as amplitude increases, a) the string length nominally increases along with b) the tension and that these factors "balance" each other out for small perturbations, i.e $\delta f|_{T,\rho}\approx -\delta f|_{\rho,l}$ for small amplitudes and then the tension "wins" beyond that threshold. The problem is
Cites Dale · 2025-11 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Beating the uncertainty principle for musicians”
as long as we excite only the fundamental mode, we can immediately tune the note These two halves of the sentence contradict each other. If you have something that happens immediately then there will be be harmonic components at all frequencies. Not just the fundamental mode. All modes will be excited. Musicians cannot beat the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle comes from the Fourier transform. Music is not an exception to the Fourier transform, but rather a prototypical demonstration of it. At small enough time scales the forces are not constant and the motion is decidedly non-sinusoidal [this video]