Science and art have come together to demonstrate a splendid phenomenon that seems to be taken from a fantasy tale. We all associate sound directly with one of the senses of the human being, the ear. We will never associate it by sight, but to its surprise the sound can be seen. It is explained as follows:
The voice is sound, the sound is vibration and the vibration is waves.
Hans Jenny, a Swiss physicist considered the father of cymatics, studied the effect of sound vibrations on fluids, liquid paste and powdered substances. Cymatics is the study of the ways in which sound or vibration are externalized. The sound has an ordered pattern and can present drawings of geometric figures that change according to the fundamental frequency or, what is the same, the musical tone.
The wonderful thing about cymatics is its mestizo nature between science and poetry, between aesthetics and mathematics. Beauty and number meet, as if it were a Pythagorean ode to nature, but found in the twentieth century from the experiments of Jenny.
However, the history of cymatics is much older. Certain African tribes used the figures that the grains of cereal formed on the drums to guess the future. But humanists such as Leonardo da Vinci or Galileo Galilei have already observed the phenomenon and tried to give it a scientific explanation.
The first scientist who devised a way to produce the figures and who was systematically collecting the drawings was Ernst Chladni, German physicist and musician, born in the mid-eighteenth century who in 1787 wrote the book Discoveries on the theory of sound.
Above, Ernst Chladni, below, some of the patterns he observed. Chladni could not explain the phenomenon scientifically.
It was the French mathematician Sophie Germain who solves the equation of sound drawings at the beginning of the 19th century.
In order to visualize sound patterns in an accessible way, a plate or membrane is needed, on which a particulate substance is poured, such as sand. The drawings are presented whether the plate is vibrated directly with a mechanical or electromagnetic system or if it is vibrated by resonance, placing a loudspeaker above or below the plate.
In what proportion varies its form?
According to the frequency, the greater the complexity of the waves. This can be easily appreciated in that experiment.
It's amazing how far the curiosity of man goes, those studies that make you verify how wonderful science is and the fantastic things to which we are exposed.
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