Materials
Wind chimes can be made of materials other than metal or wood and in shapes other than tubes or rods. Other wind chimes materials include glass, bamboo, shell, stone, earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. More exotic items, such as silverware or cookie cutters, can also be recycled to create wind chimes. The selected material can have a large impact on the sound a wind chime produces. The sounds produced by recycling objects such as these are not tunable to specific notes and range from pleasant tinkling to dull thuds. The sounds produced by properly sized wind chime tubes are tunable to notes, as discussed in the external link below. As aluminum is the common metal with the lowest internal damping, wind chimes are often made from aluminum to achieve the longest and loudest sounding chime.
The tone will depend on factors such as the material, the exact alloy, and heat treatment and the use of a solid cylinder or a tube. If a tube is used, the wall thickness also has an impact on the tone. Tone may also depend on the hanging method. The tone quality will also depend on the material of the object that is used to hit the chimes.
With clay wind chimes, the higher the final firing temperature required, the higher and more ringing the tone will be. Lower fired earthenware clay produces a duller sound than higher fired stoneware clay. Stoneware wind chimes are also more durable and able to resist stronger winds without suffering chipping or damage.
Read more about this topic: Wind Chime
Famous quotes containing the word materials:
“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Young children learn in a different manner from that of older children and adults, yet we can teach them many things if we adapt our materials and mode of instruction to their level of ability. But we miseducate young children when we assume that their learning abilities are comparable to those of older children and that they can be taught with materials and with the same instructional procedures appropriate to school-age children.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)