Engineering students should have an instinctive feel for the properties of different metals, but most students have difficulty distinguishing one metal from the next. To remedy this, the authors of this article had tuning forks made of 17 different alloys and one polymer. The tuning forks are used in classroom demonstrations in which students learn to distinguish different metals by using their senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Among the properties that can be demonstrated with the tuning forks are color, weight, pitch, volume, stiffness, and dampening.

CITATION: Burleigh, T. David, Fuierer Paul A. "Tuning Forks for Vibrant Teaching." JOM. 57(11) (November 2005): 26-27.

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