The Physics of Music

As a researcher, Prof. Rui César Vilão from the University of Coimbra in Portugal focuses on muon spectroscopy of semiconductors. One of his other interests is music, in particular its physical aspects. In this talk, he will demonstrate that musical language itself is bound in essential aspects by the physics and psychophysics of sound. Similarly to linguistics, where the anatomy of speech imposes characteristics common to all human languages (as the quality and quantity of vowels and consonants), the laws of physical acoustics also impose patterns that determine basic aspects of musical speech, such as musical scales.