Fun With Standing Waves

Our physics expert explains the science behind a trippy party trick

By Adam Weiner Posted 05.27.2008 at 2:38 pm 2 Comments

In this video, we see a dramatic demonstration of standing waves patterns, which form when travelling waves constructively and destructively interfere as they pass through one other.

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2 Comments

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singerguy74

from Grand Rapids, MI

05/28/08 at 9:01 am

Another interesting thing about these shapes is that they appear carved in the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland which was built in the 1500's. Many people try and "decode secret messages" from them, one father-son team even took it so far as to write a piece of music based on the pitches that correspond to the shapes. While I doubt the ancient Scottish pontiffs had secret advanced technology that would allow them to encode secret messages into the architecture in their church it is interesting that these images appear pretty closely reproduced. There are some other weird things. I'm no conspiracy theorist but history is interesting. Here's the wikipedia entry. Not much info. but interesting to gloss over:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosslyn_Chapel

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scooterbooter

05/29/08 at 9:01 pm

who would have ever guessed that a simple frequency could do such a cool thing with art. that is simply amazing to me!