The Theremin
The other day I was listening to the radio and heard a demonstration of someone playing the Theremin, an early example of an electronic instrument that can be played without touching it. Here’s the inventor Leon Theremin (who patented the device in 1928) showing what it can do:
I reckon it would be fun thing to show this to a group of physics students to ask them to figure out how the Theremin works! If you want to know the answer to that question you can find it here. It’s a simple idea based on the idea that when the operator of the instrument movers his or her hands it changes the effective capacitance between them and the aerials.
Anyway, anyone who has ever watched the detective series Midsomer Murders will (perhaps unwittingly) have heard a Theremin. Here is how the theme tune is played:
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In the Dark 
November 9, 2017 at 2:47 pm
Also used by Led Zeppelin on Whole Lotta Love and No Quarter apparently.
November 9, 2017 at 4:24 pm
One of the first 3rd year BSc projects I supervised when I started work in the Physics Department at Bath was to build a Theramin.
One of the students – who I only remember know as Paul – put a lot of his work on-line and I believe his web site became the ‘go to’ place for Theramin builders all over the world. Perhaps I should run it again next year.
I was going to point out that, as well as the Midsomer Murders theme, the Theramin can be heard on the Beach Boys 1966 hit ‘Good Vibrations’. However, doing a quick fact-check before writing this comment, I learnt that the instrument on the BB’s track was in fact an ‘electrotheramin’. This is an easier to play version invented and played by Paul Tanner. See
https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2013/02/07/171385175/no-it-wasn-t-a-theremin-on-good-vibrations-remembering-paul-tanner
for details.
November 10, 2017 at 7:58 am
The theremin is of course well known again (certainly all my kids know about it) due to Sheldon attempting to play it in an episode of the Big Bang Theory.