Cymatics: The Study of Visible Sound

Hi Dear Steemians! Finally, then I had a free minute to write a post, and even on a day like this! Therefore, taking this opportunity, I sincerely and from the bottom of my heart congratulate you on Christmas.

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For example, in today's morning, when I woke up long before the alarm clock, it was snowing outside, and the room smelt of mint gingerbread. There was silence in the corners, and for several hours I could not get out of the heated bed to have time to see the dream in which I was seven and I was happy. But unfortunately you can not stop the time ...

And now I'm in the kitchen, roasting bread for the breakfast crunch, brewing strong coffee, and finally I open that jar of crimson jam that my mother passed so long ago. Then I take a book from the shelf and start reading at random from a random page. And no matter how ridiculous it may sound, but today this book was a blog @ruth-girl. And the random page I was talking about was the post   -  Let's Learn Something Cool - What Is Sound .

With pleasure I read this post, but honestly I really wanted to supplement it. In her post @ruth-girl tells us what sound is and how it is perceived by the human senses. As I understand, sound is nothing like a wave carrying oscillations in a certain frequency, and if the range of this wave is (from 16-20 Hz to 15-20 kHz), then I can hear it, but not see it.

How to see the sound?

And now I want to tell you something very interesting. Have you ever thought about whether it is possible to see the sound? And is it real? It turns out that it's real, and this is where the science section of cymatics is studying the visible sound. Ironically, even the very word cymatics is directly related to sound. The word cymatics has the Greek origin "κῦμα", which in translation means "wave".

In order for you to understand what a visible sound is, as an example (with explanations) we will consider the well-known clip Nigel Stanford - Cymatics. This music video consists of really accomplished fascinating scientific experiments with Chladni Plate, Hose Pipe, Ruben's Tube and other devices.

• Chladni Plate 

Chladni Plate - Sound, Vibration and Sand

The first experiment in Nigel's video was Chladni Plate - the speaker on which the metal plate was attached. Then sand poured onto this plate and various tones were reproduced through the speaker. Then the sound was reproduced, and depending on the frequency, the plate began to vibrate causing the sand placed on top of it to form various patterns.

However, it was very difficult to do this; to begin with it was required to find out what frequencies resonate the plate best. A little experimenting Nigel managed to select several forms in which the sand looked beautiful. And since the sand changed its pattern in a few milliseconds, Nigel had to carefully process each note to allow the sand to smoothly move from one pattern to another.

• Hose Pipe

Hose Pipe Water Experiment

The next experiment was a hose with water attached to the speaker. This idea came to Nigel in the head, after watching several videos where people were forced to freeze water in the form of a sinusoid. Nigel took as a basis this idea, but did not freeze the water. Instead, he tried to attach the water hose to one of the speakers and see how the water reacts to the sound wave.

During this experiment, as in the case of sand, Nigel was able to determine the most optimal frequency, which transformed the water flow into a peculiar form. However, in order to record the result on the camera, the student had to adjust the speaker to the frequency coinciding with the frequency of the camera. By the way if you ignore this condition and the frequency will be different, then on the record you will see an ordinary stream of water.

• Ruben's Tube

Ruben's Tube Vs. Tesla Coil

Unlike the two previous experiments, the difficulty of this is only to properly assemble the Ruben's Tube itself. The principle of operation of this pipe is quite simple by the way and should be understood by everyone. By reproducing sound at a certain frequency, which correspond to the resonant frequency of the tube, the gas that is inside forms high and low pressure zones, which in principle affects the height of the flame.

So, my post is coming to an end, I hope now you will definitely visit the blog @ruth-girl where you will find a lot of interesting records. By the way, you can see the full version of Nigel's video here. Looked? Now imagine how talented this young man is. To be honest, it even became interesting to me - but how much effort did this guy have to make to combine scientific experiments with modern music?