The universe arranges itself into patterns, completely invisible, right in front of us. Every so often someone finds a way to make it visible.
There is a music video on YouTube that is also a physics demonstration, and it is one of the most beautiful things on the internet. It’s called Cymatics, by a New Zealand musician named Nigel Stanford. Cymatics is the scientific term for what happens when sound makes physical matter rearrange itself into patterns, coined by a Swiss physician in the 1960s from the Greek word for “wave.” Stanford just decided to make it a music video.
A metal plate covered in sand vibrates at different frequencies and the sand arranges itself into perfect geometric patterns. Ferrofluid spikes and blooms like something alive. Frozen vodka wobbles on a speaker dish into shapes that shouldn’t be possible. A Rubens’ tube turns a column of fire into a standing waveform. None of it is CGI, and the fun part is that Stanford wrote the music after filming the experiments. The frequencies that drove the visuals became the notes.
While you’re at it, check out Smarter Every Day episode 203. Destin Sandlin uses a Schlieren imaging setup to make the shockwaves off a supersonic bullet visible, a different phenomenon but the same idea.
Watch the Stanford video first. Have a good weekend.
