PIFFLE, burnsy!
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.” “The question is” said Humpty Dumpty “which is to be master - that’s all.”
Lewis Carrol
Chiff is the other half of an accounting firm somewhere in the Cotswolds (see “can anyone define “Fipple”?”).
Alternatively, it is also the white flakey bits I have to scratch away from my temples in the morning.
N, burdened by grooming
[ This Message was edited by: Nanohedron on 2003-01-30 14:54 ]
On 2003-01-30 13:54, tyghress wrote:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.” “The question is” said Humpty Dumpty “which is to be master - that’s all.”
Lewis Carrol
I knew where that quote came from Tyghress, I just thought that you too were trying to be, err, … mistress. And a very strict mistress too if I may say so. 
On 2003-01-30 13:09, dkehoe wrote:
Jerry, I didn’t realize the whistle had a “spirit” - I thought it was just a tube with holes in it.
While were on the subject, the reason I think the two things are different is this: when you blow in a whistle, the air coming out of the windway forms little eddies. These eddies hit the blade, and cause pressure swings in the air above and below the blade. The frequency of these vibrations are not initially the same as the frequency of the note you are attempting to play, but much higher. This “edgetone” vibration start the air in the pipe vibrating.
Now that I’ve managed to raise everyones ire, anyone got opinions?
I think you will also find that there is a pressure cone that builds up on the edge, the tip of this is what starts the good vibes.
Why do power lines, cracks under doors, ect. Whistle?
Not that a guy from ye Olde Europe is any specialist for yer knnigggets terminology, but I’ll still submit :
a) keeping “chiff” to the sense originally borrowed from pipe-organs, i.e. attack of the tone, or passing note.
b) keeping general wind instruments terminology about what affects the purity of a given tone–overtones, breathiness and all them kozmic drainpipe gurgleparaphonics–and is usually referred to as “colour” of the instrument.
In a gesture of conciliation, I’ll reluctantly settle to “color” if needed for consensus.
YUP mines A techni
Whizzy,
Power lines in the wind set up a trail of turbulent eddies called a Von Karman street. These are similar to the eddies that are formed by the jet of air coming out of the whistle windway, and the eddies that are formed by wind coming through a slot under a door. The frequency of all of these vibrations are determined by a number called the Strouhal number.
The difference here is that in a whistle, there is a pipe that has certain vibration modes. These “permitted” vibrations feed back to the eddies in the windway opening, and force vibration there to be that pipe frequency.