Sunday, 7 January 2018

432 Hz versus 440 Hz

I've been aware for a while about the the controversy surrounding the standard A note and whether it should be set to 440Hz (as it now is) or changed to 432Hz. I'm trying in this post to look at the mathematical properties of 432.
  • 4322=186624 is close to the speed of light as measured in miles per second. Wolfram Alpha gives a figure of 186282 miles per second for the speed of light in a vacuum which is 99.82% of 4322.

  • It also turns out that the area of an equilateral triangle whose numerical area is equal to its perimeter is given by 123=432.

  • 432 sits between the twin primes 431 and 433

  • The factors of 432 are 1,2,3,4,6,8,9,12,16,18,24,27,36,48,54,72,108,144,216 and 432. The sum of these divisors is 1240.

  • 432 is a 3-smooth number, one that is of the form 2i3j where i,j>=0 or to put it less mathematically it is a number that can be written as a power of two times a power of three, specifically 24×33. Such numbers have been called harmonic numbers. Here are the harmonic numbers up to 1000:


  • 432 is the sum of four consecutive primes103+107+109+113=432

  • 432 is the sum of two positive cubes: 63+63=432

  • OEIS lists 2944 entries for the number 432

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