That’s called Sonification

This started off as I was in the Barrio, listening to some live jazz. Overheard this guy talking with a friend about how planets sing?

I had to go and respectfully bust in. Victor Minces, academic, originally from Argentina, looks up. “This is not a good time to talk,” he says. “But come to my house and I’ll show you.”

Two days later I’m at this charming cottage under attack from a wild garden. I notice what look like siege machines, five-feet high pyramids of hanging pipes - marching out of the wilderness.

“Come in, come in,” says Dr. Minces. He has a PhD in computational neurobiology. But you can tell he’s also a fun guy.

“Here: Put the little ball right up top and see what happens.”

We’re standing next to a four-foot high board jiggling with googly eyes. He calls it his Pachinko board (he named it after the Japanese gambling game. Reminds you of pinball). I place the marble-sized wooden ball at the top and let go.

“Tinkle, blop, dingo, boop, snaggle, bing!” goes the ball. Each nail it hits reacts with a different musical note.

“Science in action,” says Victor. He does it again, this time with half a dozen balls. Full orchestra!

It’s all part of the month-long courses he gives 8-9th graders, through a National Science Foundation Grant.

“The notes depend on the size of the nail, the type of metal, and how far I drove it in. It’s about wave lengths. Sound waves. Now try and make this ring.”

He grabs two one-inch diameter lengths of pipe. He hits one with the other. Pipes come out with a pure bell tone. When I try, they produce an atonal clack. “I leave these with the kids,” he says. “Solving why I can do it and they can’t engages the kids in experimenting,” he says. “They eventually work it out, and as a result, we actually create musical instruments of all sizes. The kids love it. They have to work out the science of their orchestra.”

Now we’re outside, in that wild garden. The pipes hanging on trestles turn out to be giant tubular bells, cut to length to create musical notes. Soon the garden is sounding like Notre Dame.

“So this whole thing is a research project whose goal is to understand if music might be a good way to engage students in science,” Victor says. “In particular, low-income and underrepresented students, because there’s a crisis of representation in this country. Minority kids are not becoming scientists.”

The best thing? “We have done surveys that show kids really do come away from these courses with the confidence that they could see themselves as scientists.”

So how about these singing planets? Possible project for the kids? “Absolutely. Planets definitely have a frequency. We could convert their electro-magnetic signal into a sound signal. So in a way, you’ll be able to hear the planets! That’s called sonification.”

Another project for the kids?

“Absolutely,” says Dr. Minces. But he has a look like he needs to check with the National Science Foundation first.