Research Week - Dr. Laurie McNeil speaks on "Good Vibrations: the Interplay of Music and Physics"

Scholars and musicians from the ancient Greeks to modern times have asked questions about music: Why do we find the combination of certain pitches pleasing? Why do two different instruments playing the same note sound different? The answers to these questions arise from the profound connections between music and physics. In this lecture, Dr. Laurie McNeil, Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of North Carolina, will elucidate some principles of musical acoustics and explore how they affect the way instruments work and how we experience musical sound. In doing so she will draw on her background as a physicist and a musician, and on her experience co- teaching a course on the subject with a professional musician.

Laurie McNeil is the Bernard Gray Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned an A.B. in Chemistry and Physics from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After two years as an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT she joined the faculty at UNC-CH in 1984. She serves as a Deputy Editor at the Journal of Applied Physics. Prof. McNeil is a materials physicist who uses optical spectroscopy to investigate the properties of semiconductors and insulators. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has worked throughout her career to enhance the representation and success of women in physics. Together with a colleague in the Department of Music at UNC- CH she teaches a course on the physics of musical instruments.