“Aristoxenus (Fr. 90 Wehrli = DK I 109. 31 ff.) reports that Hippasus prepared four bronze disks of equal diameters, whose thicknesses were in the given ratios, and it is true that, if free hanging disks of equal diameter are struck, the sound produced by, e.g., a disk half as thick as another will be an octave apart from the sound produced by the other disk (Burkert 1972a, 377). Hippasus, thus, may be the first person to devise an experiment to show that a physical law can be expressed mathematically (Zhmud 2012a, 310).” [1]
Also in [2] this experiment is claimed to be the first documented scientific experiment in history. After all, Hippasus took a mathematical model for a physical phenomenon (how consonance relates to the mathematical ratios of a musical string) and tests the generalization of that model in a another physical medium (viz. bronze chimes with the same ratios 1:2 and 2:3 make the octave and fifth).
I wish they’d put this stuff in elementary math books when kids learn about Pythagoras.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoreanism/#hippasus
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240587262...