Using Fourier Analysis in a Senior Year Project: Any Experiment Ideas?

[cscott]

I'm supposed to do an "investigation into a physics-related question." for my senior year project. I want to do something realted to Fourier Analysis but I need some sort of experiment. Any ideas? How hard would a computer model be?

Also, would this topic fall more under math?

 

[nrqed]

I'm supposed to do an "investigation into a physics-related question." for my senior year project. I want to do something realted to Fourier Analysis but I need some sort of experiment. Any ideas? How hard would a computer model be?

Also, would this topic fall more under math?

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Fourier analysis could be treated as a purely mathematical topic but it has a lot of very important applications in both physics and engineering.

The simplest and most easy to explain to non scientists application is probably the application to the analysis of sound waves. A pure tone (closely approximated by a tuning fork) is a single harmonic. Then you can move on to beats (two modes close in frequencies) and then to the spectrum of different musical instruments.

I am sure you can find a huge number of pages on the web on these topics.

Just a thought.