The amazing phenomenon captured above is not actually visible to your naked eye, only to the camera. Running at 24 frames per second, as opposed to the ~12 frames per second rate of our eyes, the camera can register the vibrational signature of the sound coming out of the speaker as it affects the nozzle of the hose. You can see this in slow motion at around 1:07. To try this experiment yourself, check out the instructions by the filmmaker on YouTube. And for a cool discussion on what your eye can and can't detect, read this.
Now here's your geek round-up:
- In honor of Brain Awareness Week, download and play The Great Brain Experiment to help researchers investigate how the mind works.
- Want to know what it's like inside a black hole? There's an app for that.
- Tongue-eating fish parasites. Not my favorite four-word phrase in the English language, but I have to admit they're kind-of fascinating. Gross, but fascinating.[VIDEO]
- Australian researchers theorize now-extinct wolf species on Falkland islands came from South America during the last ice age.
- Even Saturn isn't safe from meteors. Check out these cool pictures of its rings taking the hit.
- This 13-year-old Massai boy in Kenya created an LED system to keep lions from attacking his family's livestock. [VIDEO via TED]
- Giant salamander sucks up its prey like a jet engine sucks up oxygen. [VIDEO]
- John Snow's cholera map of London in the 1850s is now digital.
- Best new tumblr this week: highlights from National Geographic's photo archive over the past 125 years.
- Hearing only half of a conversation (i.e., someone talking on their cell phone) is annoying as heck, scientifically speaking.
- Three new huge and cleverly named telescopes coming soon to a mountain top not so near to you: the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).
- Lastly, 55 years ago today, Vanguard 1 was launched into orbit and it remains the oldest man-made object in orbit today. You can watch the launch and listen in as the engineers in mission control discover it has successfully attained orbit (around 3:55). [VIDEO]
Until we geek again. @Summer_Ash
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That is an amazing video. I've got to compare it to some stuff I've been reading about the acoustics of open hole (flute) pipes and closed hole (clarinet pipes). I would think the hose behaves as a closed hole pipe. That water is reminiscent of graphs I've seen in this work:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/reprints/AAclarinet.pdf
and has given me some great ideas about how to show how waves are produced!!
It really isn't producing a wave, the speaker is being used to "wiggle" (post #4 below) the hose end.
And the pattern going forward, being stationary and going backward is effectively the same effect making aircraft propellers and wagon wheels go forward, being stationary and going backward on film.
All one needs do is create a periodic action then capture that action in periods either shorter than, the same as, or longer than the actions period.
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Errr..... I suggest you go and look up what a "wave" is. There is absolutely no reason a wave cannot be created by mechanical energy. Here the energy is sound - it IS what is causing the amplifier to vibrate, is it not? The pattern the water is making is in response to those vibrations. You ever seen anyone set up a standing wave on a string that is bound on both sides? Why don't you try looking up resonance? Here's a link:
http://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au/labs/oscillations/oscillations_lab.html
Play the videos - they are amazing also!!
wave, n.
A disturbance, oscillation, or vibration, either of a medium and moving through that medium (such as water and sound waves), or of some quantity with different values at different points in space, moving through space (such as electromagnetic waves or a quantum mechanical wave described by the wave function).
Looks like a wave to me...
If I may add something to this... The human electromagnetic field instantly dances to the beat of audible music, regardless of heart rate or level of mental focus. If 10,000 people are listening to the same song on the radio, all of their magnetic fields are dancing in unison. http://teocawki.blogspot.com/2009/02/heart-tuner-video-4-heart-smile.html
The reason I bring this up is that the life in our bodies is essentially a conscious electromagnetic field passing through a saline solution and other elements.
That isn't science, that's God doing that.
Really hoping you're being a troll. Otherwise, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Interesting to see the video, but the effect is hardly surprising. You can see the effect without the aid of a video by just by manually wiggling a hose with the water turned on. Sound is vibration set in air. In this case the proximity of the hose to the wave emitter (speaker) is so close that the fact that the hose vibrates in sympathy is pretty much a foregone conclusion. Or, it could be god. ;-)
Why don't you look up what a "wave'" is? I don't think you understand.....
Once you do, you will be amazed at how much theory quantum mechanics and accoustic theory have in common....
@oncerepublican: I don't see any reason to suggest Bud86 needs to look up what a wave is; there's nothing wrong with what he wrote about a speaker as a wave emitter (specifically a pressure wave emitter). Maybe you misread him?
You are reading more into what he said than actually exists. Certainly he can create a "wave" by just wiggling the hose, but I would challenge him to make a reproducible sinusoidal wave by that method, and I would challenge him to describe it mathematically.
Is sound REALLY just "vibration in air"? Air vibrates all the time - where's the sound - where are the waves (and don't tell me about which frequencies create sound - I understand them, I don't think he does)? He hasn't shown that he understands what is going on with that video, so I challenge him to find out!!
Also, check out Dr. Emoto's research on how water holds memory.
http://teocawki.blogspot.com/2012/12/water-holds-memory.html
I'm not personally very familiar with Emoto's work, but from what I've read most scientists who've looked into it consider it seriously flawed.
Can you explain what happens to the water in the video then? Why do different crystals develop for different words? Also, I've personally replicated his rice experiment.
Holy Cow, thank you, Rachel for such an interesting array. As a university professor teaching science courses I am always looking for new things to inspire wonder - damned difficult. This is a very nice collection.
What you're seeing here are sound waves. Sound waves do this in the air, but since you can't see air, you can't see this happening. But when you transfer a sound wave to water, you can see the effect of the sound wave.
I'm afraid you've misinterpreted what is happening here. Watch the video again carefully, and you'll see that this is simply a cool demonstration of aliasing that happens when periodic activity of some kind is recorded at a frame rate near the frequency of the periodic activity. If you have ever seen any western genre films where a stage coach starts moving from a resting position and smoothly speeds up, you probably noticed that the spokes of the wheel at some point appear to slow down and possibly even come to rest for a moment, and the start moving backward, slowly at first but gaining speed again as the coach goes faster.
In this experiment the hose is physically attached to the woofer speaker. The woofer is powerful enough, and the frequency is low enough (24hz) that it is able to make the hose physically oscillate at that frequency. So, the water is actually making continuous vibrations at 24hz, but when recorded to video at 24hz, each frame captures the water wave at the same point in its periodic motion, given the illusion that the water is almost standing still.
The clip also shows what happens when the woofer is driven at slightly higher and slightly lower frequencies, which produces the slow motion forward and backward effects.
Which is how one can see a quickly alternating wave.
re: the new space telescopes
Why can't those in the astrophysics community see a fundraising opportunity when it is right in front of their eyes? They should hold lotteries to name the telescopes, $5 a ticket, with names suggested being vetted to make sure they are appropriate.
They could fund the grant writing for the next batch of telescopes off the proceeds.
Glad that young lad in Kenya is getting a chance for an education. I hope he succeeds and manages to find more ways to do many things with his ideas. Awesome and brilliant.
As usual, good geekiness, Summer.
I cry foul. or maybe semi foul. our eyes can perceive motion at 72 fps. this is why it was such a huge deal when peter jackson announced his new hobbit movie in 60fps giving it a more life like feel. While we may not see the wave structure the explanation for this video is either that it is a forgery or that the delay between shutter cycles creates a similar effect as that which is seen when a camera is pointed at a set of helicopter blades. our eyes don't see the same effect on the blades not because they're slow. they're actually quite fast. our eyes don't see this effect because shutters are not apart of the engineering mechanism in our eyes as opposed to our cameras.
You're right, Scott. Our eyes don't see the world in frames, so talking about 12 or any number of frames per second is misleading to start with. I think that was an attempt to say that with slow-enough motion 12 fps is (barely) sufficient to look continuous, but with fast motion even 24 fps isn't enough, which is why you find panning tables in the American Cinematographer's Handbook. Depending on light level and individual perception, our eyes notice flickering slower than about 50 Hz.
However, to be picky, I'm pretty sure Peter Jackson used 48 fps. Douglas Trumbull's Showscan system runs at 60 fps, and for that matter NTSC television is (almost) 60 images (fields) per second, which is why it looks much smoother than conventional films, and why many people perceive The Hobbit as looking more like TV.
in fact I'm willing to bet the reason the camera's see this and the eyes don't is because the speakers are being made to produce a 24hz wave which is in sync with the camera shutter. the wave actually shakes the hose back and forth causing the water to spray back and forth very quickly. then the slow shutter speed of the camera only picks up the part of the image where the water and the hose have been sloshed in one direction. essentially the water isn't following some kind of path as the video seems to imply. in fact the video only picks up when each part of the wave has reached the next step below it making it seem like the water is following a path.
Yes, it is an optical illusion. The details in the blog and in the video reveal that.
If you watched this with the naked eye you would see a spray of water with maybe a hint of a wave. Synching the camera with the vibrating hose allows us to see the wave form, for the tip of the hose will be caught by the camera at the same point in its oscillation each time.
Running the camera slightly out of synch lets you catch the wave at slightly different points in its cycle (the phase of the wave either advances slightly or regresses slightly with each frame shot). Since the camera slowed down the progression by a factor of 14, according to the blog post, your eye is tricked into 'tracking' individual droplets, when really it is seeing different drops at adjacent positions ( a drop in the 23 hz shot will travel not quite one wavelength down the spray between frames, but your eye 'sees' each drop travel up the spray by the remainder of the wavelength not traveled).
There is no 'foul' for they are being transparent about the 'trick'. It is a demonstration that sound is a wave.
To maintain reputation for picky pedantry, I think you meant to compare the giant salamander's sucking ability to that of a jet engine rather than a rocket.
Yeah, rocket motors have their own oxygen in either a tank for liquid fuels or in perchlorate crystals in a solid rocket motor.
Lion fish and other scorpion fish suck in their prey as well. Lion fish do so with such force they suck the scales off a gold fish while trapping it. At least, it looks that way -- one moment a gold fish is in front of the lion fish, the next moment the gold fish is gone and only a small cloud of golden scales glitters in the water in front of the lion fish.