Mountain ridgelines push oncoming winds up and over their peaks, creating the conditions for some spectacular condensation. If the displaced air is moist enough, it cools and condenses into a Keep reading
Tag: standing waves
A Game of Toss
Over the past few years, we’ve seen lots of droplets bouncing and walking on waves. But today’s example is a little different. In this set-up, the wave is a large Keep reading
Pumping With Faraday Waves
Vibrate a liquid pool vertically, and it will form a pattern of standing waves known as Faraday waves. Here, researchers confine those waves to a narrow ring similar in size Keep reading
Leaky Resonance
Some resonators aren’t perfect — nor are they meant to be! Here, researchers experiment with resonance using a disk shaking up and down over a pool of water. The disk Keep reading
Diamond-Shaped Waves
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
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