This amazing video comes from the same guy who brought you the zig zag water video who clearly likes to illustrate the effects of sound with different media. This time around it's sand. Based on work originally done by Robert Hooke and Ernst Chladni in the 17th and 18th centuries, the video demonstrates the modes of vibration in a metal plate atop a tone generator. When the frequency of the tone generator equals a resonant frequency of the metal plate, the sand covering the plate is forced into patterns along the nodal lines (areas of zero vibration) between regions of the plate that are vibrating in opposite directions. At low resonant frequencies, there are only a few areas vibrating like this, but as the frequency increases, smaller and smaller areas on the plate start vibrating opposite to each other, creating more and more complex patterns. There is another version of this video where you can hear the tone actually being generated to make each pattern, but it comes with serious volume warning as the pitch goes high enough to cause hearing damage.
Here's your weekly roundup of geek:
- Hilarious GIFs reenacting how different animals eat their food.
- Human powered Ferris Wheel in Myanmar via Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. [VIDEO]
- Hollywood geek: gravity defying tricks of Fred Astaire revealed from Royal Wedding. [VIDEO]
- How '@' went from analog to digital, from bookkeepers to email.
- Got some time to kill? How about looking for some warped galaxies?
- If you like hamburgers, stay clear of this tick that can turn you vegetarian.
- Tourists on Brownsea Island are damaging local bird populations by using an app that mimics their mating songs.
- A stunning selection of images from Princeton University's Art of Science competition. Explore the full set of images here.
Finally, today is the 50th anniversary of the first woman launching into space. Soviet cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, was launched on a Vostock rocket on June 16, 1963. She spent three days in space, orbiting the Earth approximately 48 times, which was more than all six of the American Mercury astronauts combined. At the risk of sounding cliche or dated or both: you go girl!
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