Stradivarius violins are violins that have a pristine sound quality and are over 300 years old. Stradivari was a man who made violins in the 1700's. They are the best sounding violins i believe and they cost only over million dollars, nothing much or anything. But yes they have a really really good sound quality (which is probably why they cost so much) and scientist Nagyvary decide that he wanted to know how Stradivari was able to create such amazing violins with amazing sound quality. People who owned Stradivarius violins were able to give them up in the name of science! Spectroscopy was used by this scientist to seek out the chemical structure of this wood and then he compared it to other violins made in the same time period and the results were shocking. The wood of the Stradivarius violin showed that it had been brutalized chemically, the amount of lignin was really low and hemi-cellulose was greatly damaged. Because of this it changed the acoustics making it sound beautiful. The scientist tried many things evening baking wood to try to get the same results as the Stradivarius wood but it did not work and it seemed like the wood was chemically made different by iron salt or copper salts which increases oxidation. He cannot tell for sure unless he gets more samples of the violin which shouldn't be that difficult since they only cost 5 million dollars. But Nagyvary thinks that Stradivari did not use this to make the violin better but simply preserve it for a long time. But today they have a very nice sound. Since i play violin i know how some can sound good and some can sound not so good. I have not heard a Stradivarius violin for myself because i don't know anyone who has 5 million dollars to spare but i have heard they create a beautiful sound and the chemical structure of it is what causes it.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/features/chemistry1/q_subject/21/?tx_naksciarticle_pi1%5Bpage%5D=2&cHash=e30895d197325e7f647192d368d1b8d3
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