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Laserharp
The Laserharp
Overview
The laser harp is a musical instrument. It resembles a stringed harp, but instead of strings, it has lasers. The lasers are placed in the bottom of the harp and are directed upward, to be sensed by photodarlingtons placed along the top bar of the harp. When the laser beams are broken, the photodarlingtons send a signal to the tone generator circuit. This circuit produces a frequency that is sent through an amplifier and a speaker and is heard by the students as the notes of a scale. The students are able to play multiple notes at once and the length of time they hold their hand in the beam determines the volume and length of the tone that is generated.
Educational Opportunities
The Laser Harp will eventually be delivered to Happy Hollow Elementary School, where it will be used to teach students about relevant science concepts. The project has many educational possibilities. Among these are the investigation of electronic circuitry, understanding lasers and their lack of dispersion, sensor circuits, and sound wave analysis. The students will enjoy playing the laser harp and should become interested in the scientific principles behind its construction. Additionally, the laser harp will become an EPICS demonstration unit, and will serve as an example of acomplishments by Purdue EPICS students.
Proposal
The idea of the Laser Harp project was first proposed to EPICS by Miss Anderson, of Happy Hollow Elementary School. She felt that the laser harp would be a good learning tool for the students, and would go well with a previous project that EPICS had delivered, the Theramin. A website was found, which gave general design instructions for how to build a laser harp. While many of the original ideas came from this website, we opted to create our own design for the laser harp, as shown.