Cymatic art

Why “Cymatics”? What does it mean? Cymatics can be described as the process of visualizing sound waves by vibrating a medium. All sounds we hear are waves, typically in air, that vibrate your eardrums, which in turn create electrical signals to send to your brain to interpret. These waves are only invisible to our eyes […]

"Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without."-Confucius

These are six shots of a demo that we do in my AP Physics class. Yesterday was the last day for seniors, so I pulled it out to play. You're looking at sand on a black metal plate attached to a machine that vibrates the plate up and down at high frequencies. Certain frequencies set up standing wave patterns in the plate. When there is a place on the plate where the waves are the greatest (an antinode) the sand is pushed away and collects in the areas where the plate is hardly moving at all…

1889 chromatic polarization

Gabriel Kelemen – Cymatics: when Sound meets Substance | Nasui Collection & Archives

A set of CHLADNI STANDING WAVE PATTERNS generated in sand on the surface of a vibrating metal plate. The sand collects in the areas of the plate where the waves in the plate cancel each other completely. Each resonant wave pattern occurs at a specific frequency. This set was originally published by John Tyndall in 1869, it has been reorganized to show the periodic families that emerge as the frequency of the vibration increases.

These pictures, drawn by a harmonograph, may better be described as pictures of music. A harmonograph is a mechanical device that uses pen...

Linden Gledhill, a pharmaceutical biochemist, builds custom gear that can record the beautiful, weird, and sometimes bizarre intersection of science, art, and nature. His latest photographs of cymatics, or standing waves in water, are breathtaking.