Young-Helmholtz laws

Young-Helmholtz laws

[¦yəŋ ′helm‚hōlts ‚lȯz] (mechanics) Two laws describing the motion of bowed strings; the first states that no overtone with a node at the point of excitation can be present; the second states that when the string is bowed at a distance of 1/ n times the string's length from one of the ends, where n is an integer, the string moves back and forth with two constant velocities, one of which has the same direction as that of the bow and is equal to it, while the other has the opposite direction and is n- 1 times as large.