Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Wednesday Wonder: Sound, Visualized

Maybe you've wondered what sound waves look like? 

The video below shows you sound's geometric vibration patterns, called Chladni patterns, named for "Father of Acoustics" Ernst Chladni (1756-1827). Chladni published one of the first treatises on the science of sound. (A musician, he invented both the euphonium and the clavicylinder; a meterorite enthusiast, he was among the first to claim, correctly, that meteorites originated in outer space and, subject to earth's gravity, fell from the sky.)

Note: You might want or need to adjust the video's sound.



(My thanks to Open Culture, where I first saw this visualization.)

Chladni Plates: First Step Towards Visualizing Sound at Whipple Collections

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh, wow! Fractals ... you can't help but see God's fingerprint everywhere. So many of those look like the petal patterns of flowers and butterfly wings ... and ... and ... well, lots of things. Once I turned the volume WAY down, I watched with a sense of wonder that brought tears. So beautiful!

Have I told you how much I love the links you share? They widen my world (with little effort on my part) and I'm grateful. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

love this! am wonderfully lost and caught up in the many ways this speaks to so much we don't yet "know". thank you for sharing this!

sherry

S. Etole said...

I had never wondered but I'm glad I found out. I, too, thought of flowers as I watched.

Elliot MacLeod-Michael said...

Where have all the Renaissance men and women gone? You never hear about someone doing really significant work in two completely different fields anymore

Cindy Brown said...

This is awesome, Maureen. Such an interesting concept that most of us do not relate to - sound producing a visual. Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

I've been doing some study on light and sound. A friend sent me this video about a week ago. Very fascinating. Posted today a short poem entitled Spoken Light. The Sound of Vision. Thanks for this Maureen.