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Reprinted by permission of Dick Berg, University of Maryland, for use on this website.

The demonstrations contained and referenced herein are listed for the purposes of cataloging and describing physics demonstrations which should be conducted only under the direction of a trained instructional support professional or physicist. These demonstrations are not presented for the purpose of being conducted by persons unconnected to this Facility and/or persons not consulting with or being supervised by the recognized instructional support professional or physicist and his/her staff. The University is responsible only for those demonstrations carried out using its own equipment using established safety and scheduling policies, and bears no responsibility for those choosing to use this source material for their own purposes. All demonstrations described and contained herein are public domain, and can also be found in reference materials in libraries, bookstores, and electronic sources.

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Connect the reed sets to the mechanical oscillator.  CAUTION:  make sure the mechanical oscillator is locked when you are disconnecting the reeds or loops.  Then connect the wave generator to the amplifier and the amplifier to the oscillator.  Set the reeds in vibration and as you sweep the frequencies different reeds will begin to resonate. NOTE:  Too much power at low frequencies will blow the fuses on the mechanical oscillator.  Observe the same precautions when attaching and running the loop.

Pull the string of the resonance gyro really hard to set it in motion.  As the unbalanced part of the gyroscope slows down the a appropriate length reed will vibrate.

Another demonstration of resonance is to place a quarter in a 9'' balloon.  Blow the balloon up and tie it off.  Move the balloon so the quarter starts to rotate very quickly on the inside.  Stop moving the balloon and allow the quarter to slow down.  A high pitched whine should be emitted when the coin is resonant to the natural period of the balloon.