Can your speakers freeze water?

[horsespatoot]

YouTube user Brusspup took a subwoofer and set it to the same frequency as the frame rate of his video camera.
Because the water is vibrating at the same rate that the camera is recording, the water appears to freeze in mid air. By slightly tweaking the speaker's frequency, the water can even appear to flow up from below.

[bbmyers]

Cool! But that guy needs a real hobby. Maybe he should learn how to play guitar?

[hekawi]

crazy cool!

[telefunken]

AWESOMENESS!!

[Dan German]

My amp speakers can. But that's just because I'm so cool when I play.

[krowbot]

Mesmerized..........

[emu!]

So...

Is this what the internets are coming to? Experiments that do nothing for mankind other than waste precious hard drive space?

Where's the porn? I want more PORN!

[Larry F]

I used to teach an acoustics class. For one demo, we had an 8' wire that was vibrated with a small motor. We would turn out the lights in the room and shine a strobe on it. It was the eeriest looking thing. You could freeze the string into one position based on the number of nodes the strobe showed.

[reverbbb]

Something ain't right here.

That "stopped" stream of water never changes shape. There is no way that every drop will be exactly in the same location over the coarse of several seconds (thus, causing the frozen effect). To prove my point, just look at the randomness of the 23 Hz drip line. How come the 24 Hz drip is not so random in the trajectory path?

It is an amazing trick, even if it ain't real.

[waparker4]

Originally Posted by reverbbb

Something ain't right here.

That "stopped" stream of water never changes shape. There is no way that every drop will be exactly in the same location over the coarse of several seconds (thus, causing the frozen effect). To prove my point, just look at the randomness of the 23 Hz drip line. How come the 24 Hz drip is not so random in the trajectory path?

It is an amazing trick, even if it ain't real.

Do the pressure waves of the speaker work to regularize the pressure in the air that the water molecules are traveling through?

I.e., the water drops willy-nilly with no sound and random atmosphere effects, but the water drops more predictably in the presence of sound waves.

[J-man]

Originally Posted by Larry F

I used to teach an acoustics class. For one demo, we had an 8' wire that was vibrated with a small motor. We would turn out the lights in the room and shine a strobe on it. It was the eeriest looking thing. You could freeze the string into one position based on the number of nodes the strobe showed.

Yep, we did that exact experiment in acoustics class (about the only memory I have of that class). Cool trick, kinda trippy too..

[reverbbb]

Originally Posted by waparker4

Do the pressure waves of the speaker work to regularize the pressure in the air that the water molecules are traveling through?

I.e., the water drops willy-nilly with no sound and random atmosphere effects, but the water drops more predictably in the presence of sound waves.

Not a bad theory. Maybe it is possible. However, I have a hard time imagining sounds waves at that frequency creating such uniformity in the 800~2000 drops of water in those few seconds. Perhaps at 24,000 Hz, the theory would hold more "water".

Something simply does not look right to me. There is a jump in the video stream at a couple of places.

Additionally, how in the world can a person simply twist a cheap water valve and allow exactly 24 drops out each second? Then he demonstrates it twice. Also note that as soon as the camera pans down where the valve leaves the picture, the drops turn into a stream again (without any water adjustment).

[DoodlySquat]

Wow that's pretty sweet. Imagine if it went at the same rate as our eyeballs then it would look like that without a camera, too cool.

[Larry F]

Originally Posted by J-man

Yep, we did that exact experiment in acoustics class (about the only memory I have of that class). Cool trick, kinda trippy too..

You should have taken my class. It was at Columbia College Chicago and was populated with film and recording students. I've never had so much fun teaching. I had two other great demos:

1. Wire two speakers out of phase, send a sawtooth through them, turn them facing each other, walk one speaker up to the other. You hear the comb filter effect right in front of you. You can literally hear the lower harmonics cancel out.

2. I also broke wineglasses. We had special physics wineglasses for this. I had a college-wide reputation for doing this. After I set things up, my students would go down the hall and invite other classes to observe. I used a 200 hz or so sawtooth wave played extremely loud. I set the speaker right next to the wineglass, then very slowly changed its frequency until suddenly it popped a little and crumbled. I couldn't do it every time. I probably at an 80% chance of success.

[J-man]

Originally Posted by Larry F

You should have taken my class. It was at Columbia College Chicago and was populated with film and recording students. I've never had so much fun teaching. I had two other great demos:

1. Wire two speakers out of phase, send a sawtooth through them, turn them facing each other, walk one speaker up to the other. You hear the comb filter effect right in front of you. You can literally hear the lower harmonics cancel out.

2. I also broke wineglasses. We had special physics wineglasses for this. I had a college-wide reputation for doing this. After I set things up, my students would go down the hall and invite other classes to observe. I used a 200 hz or so sawtooth wave played extremely loud. I set the speaker right next to the wineglass, then very slowly changed its frequency until suddenly it popped a little and crumbled. I couldn't do it every time. I probably at an 80% chance of success.

That sounds a lot better than the acoustics class I took (I was studying Music Technology). The physics teacher who taught that class was a terrible teacher and something of a character (not in the good way). He'd take any opportunity to spout nonsensical (and usually offensive) statements about current events that had no relevance to acoustics. To make it worse, his class was 9am on a monday.

Towards the end of the year most people had stopped attending his class and they gave us all the minimum pass grade for acoustics, since apparently his incompetence was well known amongst the staff.

Why they didn't fire him is beyond me.

[PeteMac]

So . . . why is sound even needed in this experiment ?

Wouldn't just synching the camera frame rate to the drips/stream do the job ?
The same as synching a strobe .

and the little hose that is emitting the water seems to be in "slo-mo" in most of the close-up shots, even when the guy has his hand there adjusting the flow.

Freezing moving water always looks cool though

[charlie chitlin]

I had a '79 Twin Reverb that could kill grass.

[PinewoodRo]

I found a dead mouse in my old Laney 4x12.

[mr natural]

I can use my amp to make my wife run into the room and yell at me really loudly to turn it down.
-Mr. N.

[Nick JD]

That's like when you see car wheels turning on screen and they appear to go in reverse due to the frame rate.