IntroductionI am doing the chemistry of an acoustic guitar, a guitar is a very popular musical instrument. I chose to do the chemistry of guitars , because I’m around guitars a lot, and own quite a few. My life is affected by guitars in that I play one pretty much every day, and they're really awesome.
Composition of ...
Main Chemicals, Compounds, Components
I would say that the two main components of a guitar are spruce wood and stainless steel. Stainless steel always has 10.5% chromium; it also usually contains nickel, molybdenum, and nitrogen. The Stainless steel used in frets, and tuning pegs are austenitic stainless steel, which means that it has 18% chromium and 8% nickel, the rest of the metal varies. Spruce wood is made of basically Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. Wood as I’m sure you know occurs naturally, because it’s a tree. Stainless steel however is made by a bunch of different metals all being melted together, but has to have at least 10.5% Chromium, as I stated above. The percentage of chromium is specific because it’s what makes it “stainless”. What happens is a layer of Chromium Oxide forms on the outside of the other metals, which makes it so that rust (Iron Oxide) cannot form on it.
Resources
http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/guitars/acoustic/buying-guide.php
Guitar buying site
Parts of a guitar picture
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-stainless-steel.htm
Compositions of various stainless steels
http://www.gowelding.com/met/austenitic.html
Composition of austentic stainless steel
http://www.sandmeyersteel.com/300-series-austenitic.html
Composition of austentic stainless steel
Basic composition of Spruce
http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1546/01/2010caronphd.pdf
In depth composition of Spruce
About the Author
PJ Willett is a Junior at Billings Senior High School. This fine fellow enjoys music that doesn’t suck, playing the guitar, and long walks on the beach (maybe, you never know,
we live in Montana what beaches are here?) Another interesting thing about this fine human being is that he builds guitars and sells them on the internet, I assume that’s why he picked guitars as his chemistry of ... I mean, I don’t know it makes sense.