Sympathetic Vibration Physics

Sympathetic Vibration Physics
25th April 2000

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This is a popular subject with Cranks, Conspiracy Theorists, UFO Abuctees, The Internet Loonatic Fringe, Pyramidiots, Victorian Quacks, Crystal Healers/Practitioners and Scientific Charlatans.

There are many popular rumours and stories which are constantly regurgitated in New Age Books and On The Internet. I am not sure how many of them were true, or if true, how much have they been exaggerated?

As I compare the different versions of the same stories, it is obvious that the chinese whispers has effected some versions, and as many of the stories may have originated over a century ago, it is now impossible to get any corroborating evidence.
Especially when the story ends " alone poor and destitute at the end of his life, he burned all his notes and papers, before smashing all his experiments and equipment . . . "
However if we start by taking into account some observable facts, we may be able to draw some valid information from the crazy stuff.

Observable Fact Number 1 ( Glass )

Opera Singers and Wine Glasses Everyone knows about the story of how an opera singer is often able to smash a wine glass, by finding the resonant frequency of it and attacking the note at full volume. This is because they have highly trained voices that can :-
a) Project - The projection of voice in a theatre is an old art, born long before the advent of electronic amplification. Technique is the secret. The breath comes from the core of the body down in the abdomen. Most people collapse their chest when breathing out, this restricts the flow of air from the lungs, making the sound choked and less resonant or full. The diaphram at the base of the stomach should be the only organ in the body that pushes the air out, the chest should be kept fully out enabling unristricted tubing in the broncia and allowing efficient flow to refill the lungs quickly. This is the only method which can be used to engage the full capacity of the lungs, with less breaths.
Rock and pop singers often get nodes on their vocal chords because of poor stance and breathing when singing, this can lead to surgery, months of not being able to speak afterwards and a terminated career.
b) Keep a note in almost perfect tune through it whole envelope, this requires years of training, and a very good ear. The glass shattering trick would require a sustained note with no variance, untrained singers often sing sharp when singing loud, and often become too exhausted to sing sustained notes for long periods.

The reason this works is because every glass flexes in sympathy with every note sounded near it. The flexing is usually microscopic and of no consequence. But if the resonant frequency is produced, this would cause an accelerated flexing, which if loud enough would cause the glass to break because of the amplitude of the flexes would quickly build up past the elasticity of the structure, causing it to fail.

Most objects are less brittle than glass, therefore much more elastic, and less likely to fall to pieces.
You can often hear the window pains of buildings rattling in sympathy with diesel engines, this is because the much larger mass of the glass in the frame has a resonant frequency close to or a multiple of the the current r.p.m. of the engine.

However, glass is technically a liquid. If you see a glass pane that was installed a long time ago, it is very often thicker at the bottom because it runs very slowly.
It is worth keeping this in mind when comparing it to solid structures like granite and quartz.

John Ernst Worrel Keeley ( 1827 - 1898 )

Sympathetic Vibration
Sympathetic Vibratory Physics

Keeley spent 50 years of his life learning about how sound could be used to propel material, and affect the physical properties of objects. He invented many curious contraptions to demonstrate and further investigate this peculiar brand of science.

He demonstrated to numerous people his basis for a prototype engine.
He demonstrated to the American Navy, a vibratory cannon.
In 1887 he discovered how to disintegrate quartz and other types of hard rock
In 1888 he demonstrated a " rock disintegrator " in the catskill mountains of New York state, to 12 wealthy financiers of American gold mining operations, so successfully, that it caused a minor panic on the San Fransisco stock market.

The rock disintegator demonstrations led to him being granted additional funding, but he insisted on studiously following his careful and steady progress on his own. This angered all his investors, that they threatened to withdraw his funding and put him in prison.
He refused to share any of his secrets until his work was complete, and this made matters worse for him. He eventually burned all his papers and destroyed his equipment, leaving him to live out his remaining years, poor and forgotten.

Hüygens Seranade A curious principle was descovered by Christiaan Hüygens in the 1650s.
He found that if you leave two clocks with pendulums ticking in close proximity for long enough, then they fall into perfect time, so presumably you would just hear one bigger clock ticking.

This has got to be related to the low frequency of 1 cycle per second ( 1Hz ) frequency being experienced by both timepieces, and therefore being emitted, or radiated. The noise made by a clock is essentially a form of simple loudspeaker. The mass of it moves the air in such a way that you can hear a click. Because you can hear a click, then the same sound pressure is being applied to the case of the other clock just the same.

In a manner this is almost the same as swinging the pendulum yourself with your hand, or shouting at the weight every time it comes close to your mouth. Each of these would have a very small, but still measureable influence on the timekeeping of the clock.

To read more about Christiaan Huygens follow this link to my page about him