Physics · Study 018
Chladni Plate
Five thousand grains of sand dance on a vibrating square plate and settle on its nodal lines, drawing Chladni figures. Click for a new mode.
What you're looking at
Each grain jitters at random, and the size of its jitter depends on how hard the plate is shaking underneath it. Where the plate moves a lot, grains are thrown around. Where it stays still, along the nodal lines, they stop. Over a few seconds the sand sorts itself into the pattern of silence.
The idea behind it
Ernst Chladni showed these figures in the late 1700s by bowing metal plates sprinkled with sand, making sound visible for the first time. The patterns here use the standard textbook formula for a square plate, where two whole numbers choose the mode.
Try this
Click or tap to scatter the sand and switch the plate to a different pair of mode numbers.
