Tuning fork activities11/25/2023 ![]() Tuning forks even come in handy if a broken bone is suspected and an X-ray machine is not available. A loss of sensation, Hundt said, may be caused by a chronic illness, like diabetes, older age, or even a side-effect of medication, like chemotherapy. A vibrating tuning fork-touched to a patient’s extremities while her eyes are closed (usually a distal joint, said Hundt, like the fingers or toes)-can help a nurse determine whether a patient has neuropathy or a spinal injury. Tuning forks are also useful in assessing a patient’s loss of neurologic sensation, explained assistant professor Beth Hundt. The Rinne, therefore, helps nurses determine whether hearing loss is indicated, and refer the patient to an appropriate specialist if it is. In a healthy ear, conduction of sound through air should be greater than perception of sound through bone. ![]() In each position, the patient indicates whether they hear the sound, and signal when they perceive that the sound stops. For the Rinne Test, a nurse places the vibrating tuning fork against the mastoid bone behind the patient’s ear for a few seconds, then moves it in front of the ear canal. The Weber test-in which a nurse strikes a tuning fork and places its stem on the crown of a patient’s head or forehead, equidistant from each ear-assesses whether hearing is better on one side or the other. Brown, superintendent of nurses at the training school of the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital), “in testing in the hearing to find tone limits that is, the lowest and the highest tone a patient can ear, and at the same time note whether he can hear the intermediate tones.”Īt the turn of the nineteenth century and today, advanced practice nursing students do the Weber and Rinne Tests to assess whether and what kind of hearing loss is present. “It is necessary,” assert the authors of the 1937 nursing textbook NURSING IN DISEASES OF THE EYE, EAR, NOSE, AND THROAT (by, among others, registered nurse Mary P. In order to sustain the duration of the note you need some method of continuously replacing the energy which is being radiated - eg some method of vibrating the tuning fork while it is attached to the resonance box.In nursing, tuning forks were used then and now to assess patients’ hearing and, if loss is indicated, to help determine whether the reason for the loss was due to problems with “sound-conducting” or “sound-perceiving.” So increasing the frequency will increase loudness but also decrease the duration of the note.Ĭoating the resonance box might increase the duration of the note but it will also reduce the loudness. According to the article On the acoustics of tuning forks this efficiency is proportional to the 6th power of the frequency. Tuning forks with higher frequency dissipate energy more efficiently. You could also make them larger, but this would probably also make the frequency lower. You could increase the energy stored in the tuning forks by increasing the distance between the tines. ![]() Unless you change the tuning fork to make it store more energy, increasing loudness decreases duration, and vice versa. Or it can be dissipated over a shorter time with a louder sound - as when using a larger resonance box. The stored energy can be dissipated over a long time with a quiet sound - this happens when you do not connect it to a resonance box. Once this energy has been dissipated the sound stops. The limitation is set when the tines are touching. There is only so much energy you can put into each tuning fork when you set it vibrating. This is an issue of the conservation of energy. You cannot make the sound both louder and longer without changing the tuning forks to make them store more energy.
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