When teaching standing waves, one often uses as examples musical instruments with strings, e.g., pianos, violins, and guitars. In today's popular music culture, young people may be more familiar with guitars than any other string instrument. I was helping my 15-year-old granddaughter make some repairs and adjustments to her electric guitar, and the subject of the spacing between the frets on the fingerboard was raised. I told her that the physics of standing waves and the equal tempered musical scale dictate the location of the frets. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that students might be introduced to the physics of standing waves using a guitar and to the formula for the fret locations. By measuring the positions of the frets, this formula can be tested.

Topics
Music scales, Musical instruments, Standing waves, Educational assessment, Teaching
1.
A history of musical scales is described in http://www.midicode.com/tunings/greek.shtml.
2.
Additional information on Pythagoras' work is found at http://www.dartmouth.edu/∼matc/math5.geometry/unit3/unit3.html.
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© 2006 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2006
American Association of Physics Teachers
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