The Relationship Between Pipe

Length and Sound Frequency

By: Arielle Cohen

Introduction
In this lab, I related pipe length to frequency. I discovered that the frequency of a pipe
instrument is inversely related to the length of a pipe, as shorter pipes produce notes
with higher frequencies and vice versa. After inputting my data into Google Excel, I
found the equation of the trend line to be 5x²-188x+2283. This means that the
frequency changes exponentially as the pipe length changes.
 Materials
● Plastic pipes
● Computer
● Audacity program
● Ruler to measure pipe length
● Microphone
● Phone
Procedure
1. I purchased an instrument with eight pipes of different lengths of the same
diameter.
2. I blew into each of the pipes and recorded the sound they made. I was sure to
record in a quiet room so that the sound of the note was clear and the frequency
was easily picked up.
3. I downloaded the program Audacity and uploaded my recording onto it.
4. I used Audacity to analyze each note. On the graph the program produced, I put
my cursor on the highest peaks for each note and recorded the corresponding
frequency.
5. I measured the length of each pipe.
6. Using Google Excel, I input my data and made a scatter plot graph. I also used
the equation feature to come up with a trend line to match my data.
Results
As the pipe length
gets shorter, the
frequency goes up.

On the pipe
instrument, each
pipe is labeled with
a note.
Graphs
Conclusion
I discovered that the frequency of a note is inversely related to pipe length. When I
created my graph, this equation best expressed my data: 5x²-188x+2283. This means that the
frequency exponentially increases as the pipe length decreases.

At first I wasn’t sure how to use the program Audacity. When it analyzed my data and
produced a graph, there were many peaks for many different frequencies. Then, I realized that
the highest peak on the graph represented the loudest frequency for each note.

There were some slight errors in my data as there was no trend line that matched the
data perfectly. This may have been because Audacity rounded the frequency levels or
miscalculated them. It also may have been because I measured the pipe lengths in inches and
then converted them to centimeters. However, even though there is a margin of error, the data
seems to match the trend line closely and it creates a pattern capable of being analyzed for
the purposes of this experiment.
Photos