W. Bruce Richards, Professor
email:
bruce.richards@oberlin.edu
Phone:(440) 775-6799
Fax:(440) 775-6379
Office:Wright Laboratory 208
Laboratory:Wright Laboratory 104
Address:- Department of Physics and Astronomy
Oberlin College
Oberlin, Ohio 44074-1088
Education
Research Interests
My research interests are in Musical Acoustics, most specificially the
physics
of woodwind musical instruments. I am in the early stages of studying
the
dynamics of vibrating reeds or lips, to try to understand better how
they
interact with an air column to produce sustained oscillations. At the
moment
I am trying to teach a computer to blow a clarinet without a
mouthpiece,
by sensing the pressure at the the top of the instrument with a
microphone,
computing an appropriate rate of flow of air into the instrument for
that
pressure, and then injecting air at that rate under computer control.
If
the reed behavior is properly understood and programmed into the
computer,
oscillation (noise) should result.
Recent Courses