The Smallest music note you'll likely see on sheet music is the 16th note.
2 connected 16th notes: Image
What if we went even further down the line of faster notes?
Planck time is defined as the time it takes for light to travel 1 Planck distance (L) or sec.
There are more units of planck time in a second than there are seconds since the big bang: image
I'll assume one half note is equal to 1 second, and that each further note takes half the time to play as the last. With this in mind I
get the equation:
That's a th note. Imagine a note with 144 flags on it!!!
a 64th note with 4 flags: image
We can go smaller and faster but it would make no difference since the human brain won't be able to determine beats faster than around a 32nd note.
Easy Math Editor
This discussion board is a place to discuss our Daily Challenges and the math and science related to those challenges. Explanations are more than just a solution — they should explain the steps and thinking strategies that you used to obtain the solution. Comments should further the discussion of math and science.
When posting on Brilliant:
*italics*
or_italics_
**bold**
or__bold__
paragraph 1
paragraph 2
[example link](https://brilliant.org)
> This is a quote
\(
...\)
or\[
...\]
to ensure proper formatting.2 \times 3
2^{34}
a_{i-1}
\frac{2}{3}
\sqrt{2}
\sum_{i=1}^3
\sin \theta
\boxed{123}
Comments
For a sixteenth note, there are many periods of sinusoidal vibration of the air within that single note. Presumably, the shortest possible note would have to be multiple planck lengths long, in order to allow for some sort of vibration. Interesting idea.