Question

Liona Boyd, a famous Canadian guitarist, tunes her guitar’s A string with a 440 Hz tuning fork. Beats are heard at a frequency of 4 Hz. To give herself more information Ms. Boyd wraps a piece of masking tape around one of the tuning fork tines (thus decreasing its frequency). This time a 5 Hz beat frequency is heard. What is the frequency of the guitar string?

Answer 1

Given that the frequency of the tuning fork is f2 = 440 Hz

Let the frequency of the guitar be f1.

Then beat frequency will be

`f1-f2=4Hz`

When masking tape is wrapped around the tuning fork, the frequency of the fork decreases but beat frequency increases. Indicating that the frequency of the guitar is more than the frequency of the tuning fork.

So, the frequency of guitar will be

`\begin{gathered} f1=4+f2 \\ =4+440 \\ =444Hz \end{gathered}`