Good VIbrations

[TommyK]

You've heard and felt a mandolin vibrate, but have you seen it vibrate??

Heres a site with a couple pages showing how guitars vibrate and how mandolins vibrate. You can see that the 'f' hole mandoes have a more complex vibration mode than an oval holed mandolin.
Just though you guys would find it intersting.
Guitar:
http://www.physics.niu.edu/trossweb/Acoustics_research.html
Mandoes:
http://www.acoustics.org/press/139th/cohen.htm
Notice that the tag end of the fretboard is showing vibes on the 'f' hole version, but not the 'o' hole. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/coffee.gif

[Bill Snyder]

Dr. Cohen is a frequent poster on this site and his intruments can be found in the Eye Candy section of the site.

[jasona]

The second paper by Dave makes me wonder about the confounding influence of the different bracing (if so) between the f and oval hole instruments. Very interesting stuff!

[Chris Baird]

The apperance of more complexity for the F-hole hologram is a result of taking the hologram with a higher frequency input than the oval hole recieved. The higher nodal frequencies have more complex vibrational patterns.