Strong winds blowing across Lake Michigan created this diamond-shaped wave pattern after the incoming waves reflected off the breakwater on the right. The formal name for these waves are clapotis gaufré, Keep reading
Tag: standing waves
Psychedelic Faraday Waves
Vibrate a pool of water and above a critical frequency, a pattern of standing waves will form on the surface. These are known as Faraday waves after Michael Faraday, who Keep reading
Visualizing Acoustic Levitation
The schlieren photographic technique is often used to visualize shock waves and other strong but invisible flows. But a sensitive set-up can show much weaker changes in density and pressure. Keep reading
Lenticular Clouds
Lenticular clouds are peculiar enough that, for years, they’ve been mistaken for other things – often UFOs. These lens-shaped clouds tend to form near mountainous terrain, where air gets forced Keep reading
Songs in Soap
There are many beautiful ways to visualize sound and music – Chris Stanford’s fantastic “Cymatics” music video comes to mind – but this is one I haven’t seen. This visualization Keep reading
Psychedelic Cymatics
Cymatics are the visualization of vibration and sound. Here photographer Linden Gledhill has taken a simple speaker vibrating a dish of water and turned it into some incredible art. When Keep reading
Acoustic Levitation
Destin from Smarter Every Day has a great new video exploring acoustic levitation. With carefully placed speakers, you can create a standing wave with sound that’s capable of levitating lightweight objects Keep reading
Rubens’ Table
Veritasium’s new video has an awesome demonstration featuring acoustics, standing waves, and combustion. It’s a two-dimensional take on the classic Rubens’ tube concept in which flammable gas is introduced into a Keep reading
“High Ball Stepper”
The recently released music video for Jack White’s “High Ball Stepper” is a fantastic marriage of science and art. The audio is paired with visuals based around vibration effects using Keep reading
Reader Question: Standing Waves
captainandry asks: What would happen to a fish or swimmer in a standing wave? First of all, check out the video that inspired this question, which shows a standing water Keep reading