Music and Mathematics – Part One: Pythagoras

Once upon a time, there was an ancient Greek "philosopher" named Pythagoras. One day, as Pythagoras was walking past a blacksmith's shop by the street, he noticed something interesting about the sounds of the hammers being struck inside. What he noticed was that some combinations of hammers sounded nice and pleasant when struck at the same time, while others sounded unpleasant and jarring. When he rushed inside to investigate, he noticed that those hammers which, when weighed, produced an integer weight ratio sounded nice together, "consonance," while those hammers which produced a fractional weight ratio resulted in "dissonance," or jarring noises.

This was actually the first ever scientific phenomenon to be modeled mathematically. It shows that, even at the most basic level, there is a relationship between mathematics and science, and, in this case, between music and mathematics.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a research paper on the relationship between music and mathematics for my English class, and gave a presentation on this topic. In a series of blog posts, I am going to be outlining this relationship in more detail, and elaborating on how mathematics can be used to model and to explain our complicated universe. At the end, I will also be providing my research paper for all to read.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia, (cc)