Abstract

This lecture aims at introducing a general audience to the beautiful relationship between maths, physics and music. We will explore the evolution of ideas that led to the equal temperament tuning, the 12-note system which prevails in much music worldwide. The main characters in this story are the wave equation in a string and its pure solutions, which are given by waves with integral periods; the relations between them which are rational numbers; and finally, a twist in the plot where equal-tempered tuning is actually done with irrational numbers to achieve symmetry.

This National Science Week project is supported by the Australian Government.

Contact the host of Harmony, rational and irrational numbers, and their relationships in music