Helmholtz in the kitchen: a frying pan as a volume resonator

Abstract

Helmholtz resonators are an interesting, widespread phenomenon, which can spark students’ interest in acoustics and more generally in applying physics to the phenomena of everyday life. Using a smartphone as an experimental tool to measure and analyze acoustic data, this work presents an investigation of the sizzling noise of something frying in a pan, and also of the change of this sound when the lid of the pan is opened and closed. We adapt the general resonance frequency result of the Helmholtz resonator (1) to the case of a real lid-pan system (2) and to a better controlled case using an artificial lid with a rectangular opening and a white noise source (also provided by a smartphone) inside the pan. Experimental spectra obtained for both cases show satisfactory agreement with the theoretical prediction. We conclude with a discussion of the limitations and perspectives of the experiment.