A Simple Theory of the Sondhauss Tube

Abstract

Of the many fascinating thermoacoustic devices, in which heat is the direct cause of gas oscillations, probably the oldest known is the so-called Sondhauss-tube. The name (which is not universally used) does not refer to the discoverer (who is unknown), but to the first systematic experimenter, whose work (1850) is quoted in Rayleigh’s famous “Theory of Sound”. The earliest reference to the effect is probably a Letter to the Editor in Gilbert’s Annalen der Physik of the year 1804. Since then, several descriptive reports were published before Sondhauss; there was an inventor who wanted to use the effect for a musical instrument and had a correspondence on this idea with Goethe in 1827.

“Complex problems have simple, easy-to-understand wrong answers.” Grossman’s misquote of H. L. Mencken, from Murphy’s Law, BookII, by Arthur Bloch, 1980.