Ashley enjoys playing double bass, electric bass and percussion in her school's band, orchestra and jazz band and is involved in her school's robotics team for the BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) program.
"The field of engineering has always been very interesting to me," says Ashley.
Ashley is involved in her school's band and is particularly interested in the marimba, a percussion instrument. It is made from Honduran rosewood, which is becoming rare due to the destruction of South American rainforests. Because the rosewood grows at a very slow rate, the problem is even more serious. Concerned, Ashley decided to determine whether she could find an alternative to rosewood that would produce a similar sound.
Ashley constructed a test marimba and conducted several tests to first determine the properties of rosewood that she hoped to find in the other woods. She then recorded mallet strikes against seven different types of wood and compared the frequency and amplitude of each strike to evaluate each bar's overtone strength with that of rosewood. She discovered that padauk wood resembles rosewood more closely than the other woods she tested. She was pleased with these results, because padauk wood costs $8 per board foot, as compared with rosewood, which typically costs $20-plus per board foot. In addition, padauk wood, which is native to tropical Asia and Africa, is much more common than rosewood and is not endangered.
