Day 1 · Science & Music · Prof. Qi Wang
Science, Music & Beyond
Is music scientific? Is science musical? (Yes. Let me prove it — with sound you can hear.)
[0:00–1:00]
20-minute talk closing the Science & Music block, after Prof. Schumann's and Dr. Demby Jones's guest talks.
Personal hook: "I simulate turbulence for a living and play piano for love — today I'll show you they're secretly the same thing."
Keys: ←/→ steps · P pause · N notes · F fullscreen. The 🔊 buttons play REAL sound — turn the room speakers on!
Everything starts here · live sound 🔊
Sound = vibration
Frequency 220 Hz
🔊 Play ⏹ Stop
Something wiggles → the air wiggles → your eardrum wiggles. Frequency = wiggles per second (Hz).
[1:00–4:00] — LIVE: press Play and DRAG the slider while it sounds; the wave on screen is the actual wave you hear.
Slide low (~80 Hz): slow fat wiggles, deep rumble. Slide high (~880 Hz): fast tight wiggles, bright beep.
"Pitch isn't magic — it's a NUMBER. Wiggles per second."
Ask: who can still hear it at the very top? (Kids hear higher than adults — fun moment.)
The first law of music · live sound 🔊
Pitch is frequency — an octave is exactly ×2
Same note, higher floor: 220 → 440 → 880 wiggles per second.
🔊 A · 220 Hz
🔊 A · 440 Hz (×2)
🔊 A · 880 Hz (×4)
Every musician on Earth tunes to a NUMBER: A = 440 Hz. Music runs on math.
[4:00–7:00] — LIVE: play the three A's in a row; they sound like "the same note, higher."
That ×2 relationship is why we reuse the same 7 letter names as we go up — the physics repeats, so the music repeats.
Orchestra fact: the oboe plays 440 Hz and two hundred musicians tune to that single number.
Pitch Match 🎵 LIVE GAME
Slide your wave to match the mystery note — your ears vs the number. Invite a student up.
[7:00–9:30] — LIVE DEMO, quick round or two with a volunteer.
Point out: when the two waves LOOK the same on screen, they SOUND the same. Eyes and ears agree because both are measuring frequency.
Keep it short — 2 minutes max, it's a pace-changer.
Why do some notes love each other? · live sound 🔊
Harmony = simple ratios
🔊 3 : 2 — perfect fifth (relaxed)
🔊 5 : 4 — major third (sweet)
🔊 6 : 5 — minor third (softly sad)
🔊 45 : 32 — the tritone (tense!)
Simple ratio → the waves line up often → your brain relaxes. Messy ratio → they never agree → tension .
[9:30–13:00] — LIVE: play the fifth (calm), then the tritone (the audience will grimace — enjoy it).
5:4 = the "Interstellar" warmth (Hans Zimmer's main theme); the tritone = classic horror/danger (Danse Macabre, sirens).
Physics: at 3:2, every 2 wiggles of one wave meet 3 of the other — a repeating pattern the brain finds. The tritone (~√2, an irrational ratio) never repeats — the brain keeps searching. THAT feeling is "tension."
The secret engine of every song
Music = tension → release
Composers charge you up with tense sounds… then resolve to relaxed ones.
Like physics: store potential energy, then release it. A melody is an energy landscape for your feelings.
Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre = tritone tension. Zimmer's Interstellar theme = pure 5:4 release.
[13:00–15:00]
The 2025 talk's big idea: every piece of music is a psychological energy-conservation story — build tension (dissonance), release it (consonance).
If a piano/speaker is handy, play 2 bars of anything and narrate the tension→release moments. Or hum "Happy Birthday" and stop one note early — the room will FEEL the unresolved tension and want to finish it. Do that; it always works.
Chladni Patterns 🌀 — see sound LIVE GAME
Sand on a vibrating plate jumps to the quiet spots — every frequency paints a different pattern. Science? Music? Art? Yes.
[15:00–17:00] — LIVE DEMO: sweep through frequencies, watch the patterns reorganize.
This is the Chladni plate from the 2025 talk, in the browser. Real plates do this with real sand — the sand collects where the plate does NOT move (the "nodes").
Same physics inside a guitar or violin body: the wood vibrates in these mode-patterns; that's the instrument's voice.
And science is musical
Nature repeats itself — self-similarity
Turbulence: "Big whorls have little whorls, which feed on their velocity; and little whorls have lesser whorls, and so on to viscosity." — a real physics poem (L. F. Richardson)
[17:00–19:00] — LIVE: the Koch snowflake curve builds level by level on screen (it loops).
Self-similarity: zoom into any piece and you find the whole shape again. Coastlines, clouds, broccoli — and TURBULENCE, my research: big swirls contain little swirls contain littler swirls.
And music does it too: rhythms inside rhythms, phrases inside phrases. Bach is famously fractal.
Read the Richardson rhyme out loud — a physics equation that scans like a nursery rhyme.
Recap
What you can now hear
🔢 Pitch is frequency — a number (A = 440 Hz)
✖️ Octave = ×2 · harmony = simple ratios (3:2, 5:4)
⚡ Music moves you by tension → release — energy physics for feelings
🌀 Vibration paints patterns (Chladni) · nature composes with self-similarity
Music is physics you can feel. Science is music you can measure.
[19:00–20:00]
Fast recap, reveal line by line. Land on the last line — it's the thesis of the talk.
Questions? 🎹
Up next: Project Kickoff — pick your team & idea 🚀
Pitch Match & Chladni are in the mini-games hub — and yes, a "visualize sound" team project is on the menu.
[Q&A / flex]
If quiet: "What's a song that makes you feel tense — and can you now guess why?"
Hand off to Project Kickoff at 4:30; mention the sound-visualization project option for music lovers.