Sound waves(The behavior of soundboards)

[Ron Nossaman]

>Ron and all,
>     Have you some sort of reasoned refutation of the points I offered in 
>the post
>you so vigourously dismissed out of hand.   You say the energy transfer
model I
>referred to is in essence meaningless then immediately say, however, it is 
>not so -
>should the impact be that of an airplane instead of a mosquito.

Robin,
No, I didn't dismiss it, I disagreed that the mosquito impact would have no
effect on the carrier speed. It would have to because, as I said, the
mosquito has mass. The amplitude of the effect of both the carrier speed
and hull disturbances  will necessarily be a matter of the differences in
scale, but the effects do not go away altogether when the scale gets small.
The mass differences between a piano string and soundboard assembly are far
closer to those between the aircraft carrier and the aircraft than to the
carrier and a mosquito. Since the mosquito analogy looked to me like the
staging and foundation to the rest of the presentation, I thought it a good
first step of a reasoned refutation to challenge that first premise that a
small effect is a non existent effect.  



>     In the example given earlier of the fork placed in contact with the plate
>surely you are not going to argue that the plate is now experiencing ripples
>passing across its surface as in a pond as a result of this shaking?  

I am indeed.


> Similarly, would one
>suppose that the stiff, hard rim of a good piano is actually shaking when 
>the fork
>is brought into contact with it and a perceptible increase in sound is heard?
>Regards, Robin Hufford

Absolutely.

Ron N