Cheesy music: not just a matter of taste
: Postema, Michiel; Nurkkala, Elina; Carlson, Craig S.; Hopia, Anu
: Annual Meeting on Acoustics
: 2025
: Proceedings of DAS|DAGA 2025
: 036
: 661
: 663
: 978-3-939296-23-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.71568/dasdaga2025.036
: https://doi.org/10.71568/dasdaga2025.036
When we study musical instruments, we rarely think of cheese. Yet, some cheeses containing strong protein strings have been known to emit a very distinct squeaky sound when being bitten or chewed. Therefore, the collective of such string cheeses is commonly referred to as squeaky cheese (German: Quietschkäse; Danish: knirkost). We studied the composition and acoustics of 100 samples of Finnish bread cheese and mozzarella. As a control group, Gouda samples were used. The sound was produced by rubbing the side of a wetted blade across the top surface of a sample, creating a whining noise, almost as elegant as that of bagpipes. The blade acted like a bow on a viola string and produced a sound through slip-stick motion. Small, interconnected bubbles inside the cheese acted as resonating chambers. From microcomputed tomography images it had been shown that mozzarella has larger air pockets than bread cheese. Nevertheless, generating sound in mozzarella was less successful (20%) than in bread cheese (100%). Experiments with a bread cheese orchestra produced acoustic output resemblinga flock of seagulls. Despite these promising harmonics generated, we do not anticipate a major role for squeaky cheese in the current setting of a symphony orchestra.