Friday, September 3, 2010

The Raw Power of Sound

Electricity, magnetism, and many other naturally occurring phenomena have already been explored a great deal by scientists around the world. One important one, which I believe is often overlooked, is cymatics. Cymatics is a field devoted to the study of vibrations and sound frequencies. Many, if not all, materials have a frequency range that they naturally respond to and the results can have some devastating effects. You might have heard about the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge in Washington state that crumbled to pieces back in the 1940's because the engineers failed to take the harmonic frequencies of the wind into account. Here's a short video showing resonance in action right before the bridge finally collapsed:



Pretty crazy, huh? All I can say is I'm glad I was nowhere near that bridge when it happened, and luckily for us, modern engineers take these harmonic properties more seriously. While resonance has the capability of leveling huge man-made structures such as bridges, it might just hold the key to a whole new realm of technologies. Originally, electricity was a chaotic explosion of energy too. It wasn't until we learned how to harness it's raw power into a usable form that its true potential was realized. Here's another video of resonance that I thought was awesome. *NOTE* You might want to turn your speakers down, otherwise it's not my problem if your computer blows up.



While I'm not sure what this technology could be used for yet, I'm sure we will think of something eventually. It all just seems too perfect to me to be of no use or importance to us, and I have a feeling that it's only a matter of time before this scientific field is booming and man is finally able to tame the raw power of sound.

No comments:

Post a Comment