Therein lies the Theremin
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010posted by: krueff
Say Hello to Becky’s Scanning Theremin! Homemade from a few meter sticks, some legos wrapped in aluminum, a toy skateboard, and some circuitry, she’s produced a way to scan for objects below a detector based on their heights, that detection is given out in an audible frequency, with differing pitches being the sign of detection.
When she moves the scanner over a lego, the pitch of the Theremin increases, the closer to the detector, the higher the pitch. A lot like SONAR this method tells the “blind” scientist that there is “something” there… So instead of using this to see what’s in the ocean, we can see the analogy to scanning Nano sized particles which are too small to see, but we can SCAN for them!
The musical Theremin has been around for a while, although learning to play it well is a tricky technique. Using the Scanning Theremin opens a neat collaboration between the technology of the Arts and the needs of Science, and likely visa-versa.
Want more info?
Check out youtube’s Theremin videos & Google STM’s/SEM’s!
