Pipe organs & PM's

• by donr
• 2019-05-29 00:59:23
• General Posting
• 774 views
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Just finished a 60th college class reunion.  Went to an organ recital in the chapel.  Organist was talking about the organ & told us about all its pipes & their sizes.  They run from the size of a stubby pencil up to 32 ft.  I told him about several discussions we had here in the PMC .  People have been near sub-woofers & felt a funny sensationion the chest & worried about it causig problems w/ their device.  There were about 25 of us gathered around the organ & I asked him to play the lowest note he could to demonstrate the effect for those who never had experienced it.    I commented that during my student days, I recalled the effect when the organist played a bridge from the sermon to the collection & always wound up at that low frequency - about 15 Hertz.  It was close to the resonant frequency of the space w/i the building & you coud really sense the increase in magnitude of the sound & feel the vibration in the air.  It also would cause my lung cavity to resonate & it felt funnier tha you can imagine.  The organist said he knew exactly what I meant  & gladly demonstrated the effect for the astonished onlookers. 

You can cause your own lung cavity to resonate by sitting up straight & starting to hum a low frequency.  lower the frequency & eventually you will feel the vibration in the chest - it kinda tickles!  The phenomenon is a bit more complex than blowing across the opoen top of a Coke bottle - the lung structure is not a big hollow, but is filled w/ a bunch of membrane tissue w/ smaller open volumes inside.

Donr