Designing an experiment on piano hammer nonlinearity

[dsds1000]

I am doing a research essay in high school on researching the nonlinearity of piano hammers, but I am stuck on planning the experiment. Basically my topic is like this paper http://paws.kettering.edu/~drussell/Publications/pianohammer.pdf. However, since I am only in high school, I have trouble understanding some of the concepts, and that is why I cannot plan an experiment. I tried to ask a teacher, but this is a supposed to be an independent research essay and I am not allowed help from the school staff. So, any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Pythagorean]

Would you mind reading through it and asking specific questions as you come across things you're having difficulty understanding?

 

[pallidin]

Wow. I was looking at the paper cited and the references listed.
This is a high school assignment? Yikes.
Anyway, you came to the right place if you can ask specific questions like Pythagorean suggests.

 

[dsds1000]

The main question I have is how to measure the compression of the felt in the equation F=K*c^p. (where c is compression of the felt). I am having trouble in designing this lab around finding the compression of felt. If anyone could help that would be great

 

[pallidin]

I do not know this subject at all, but I did see these statements in the paper you cited, page1. You probably already read this:

"Dynamic measurements of the force and felt compression,
observed during the impact between a piano hammer and a
rigidly fixed string, have been obtained by Suzuki [6, 7],
Boutillon [8], and Yanagisawa and Nakamura [9]. Data may
be fit rather well to Eq.(1), with typical values of p ranging
from 2.3 to 3.6 for voiced piano hammers."