Stop what you’re doing and watch this. It’s a video of sand. Sand skittering around on a vibrating plate, to be exact. But what happens when that sand skitters is amazing. Trust us – this is something you want to see.
What you’re watching is the Chladni plate experiment, as performed by YouTube science-and-illusion wizard Brusspup (he can also coax water into a zig-zagging stream, and make Rubik’s Cubes that aren’t Rubik’s Cubes).
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-make-a-stream-of-water-zig-zag-using-sound-waves-453545080
https://gizmodo.com/this-anamorphic-optical-illusion-is-the-most-mind-bendi-5964614
When physicist Ernst Chladni performed this experiment in the 18th century, he did it with flour instead of sand, and made his metal plate vibrate with a violin bow instead of a tone generator, but the end result is the same: when the plate vibrates at a steady frequency, the particles on its surface arrange into a beautiful pattern.
The particles (sand, in this case) are arranging themselves along what are called “nodal lines” – narrow curves of motionless calm that criss-cross the otherwise vibrating surface. As the frequency changes, so does the distribution of these nodal lines, which becomes increasingly intricate at higher frequencies.
UPDATE: Brusspup has uploaded the full video of the experiment, with tones. WARNING: LOWER YOUR VOLUME. The audio in the clip could cause hearing damage.
