milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There is a Noriko in the bar today rather absorbed in a project. (Passersby may take notice, because she's rather glowing as she works.)

She has a hexagonal Chladni plate fastened to a sound emitter, forming node patterns in superfine sand, each snowflake-like pattern beautifully unique for each sound. As each one stabilizes, she turns off the sound--thankfully she has earphones around her neck to deaden the noise--and touches the plate with her fingertips evenly spaced around the rim. That's when the amazing part happens.

With such high current running through it the sand solidifies into glass threads, thin as sport-weight yarn as they cool down from the rocket-hot red-orange-white. Getting them off the plate proves slightly harder, but with gentle twists of a butter knife's blade they come free with minimal cracking. She really should invest in some silicone.

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It's the precision pitched noise that attracts the 1'8" blonde flying woman, or maybe insect, over to observe.

She realizes the beating of her wings while she hovers might disturb the sand, so she hovers high and keeps her distance.

Noriko doesn't habitually look up; she doesn't notice for a long time that there's anything hovering above her head.

After a while she looks up and raises a brow. "What are you doing up there?"

"To be honest, I was trying to figure out how that sound equipment works without disturbing your work. It is kind of hard to figure out much from up here, though," she admits.

"How are you generating that electrical current by the way? I haven't been paying as much attention to that part but... are you wearing something that is doing that?" she asks, her curiosity getting the best of her.

"The sound is what makes the work," she says. "This is cymatics, the study of visible effects of invisible sound waves. The elecricity is coming from me. Electrokinesis."

"Electrokinesis? That's a neat way of describing it. Short and to the point," she says with a smile.

Since the work has paused for a bit she descends and lands on the table. "No, I meant the equipment that is making the sound. Although, it is very clever of you to use the harmonic modes of that plate to create those patterns. I could have really used something like this in the past several weeks," she says while studying the sound emitter from a better perspective.

"That is what it's called," she says. "Only word for it, really."

"The emitter? It just puts out a vibration frequency, like the head of a bass drum when you strike it."

"A drum, huh." She takes a closer look. "The drum head is shaped like an inverted cone... Oh! I know, that is to give directionality to the sound. But, it would only make one sound, I wonder what drives it. Is the bottom of that cone attached to an electromagnet?" she think out loud.

"Uh, no," she says "Drum heads are flat. You're thinking of a speaker membrane, not the same thing."

"A speaker membrane," she repeats. "The world where I come from -- well, the worlds -- don't have much in the way of electronic technology," she explains. "There are some scientists and wizards working on it, but all we have so far are ways of storing electricity in jars. The goblins have figured out light bulbs, too. There's some neat things being done with vacuum tubes but not much."

"This equipment would have made working on elven crystal so much easier. Their stuff is phonic rather than electronic or magic. Well there is some magic but phonics drives most of it."

"You should look up the works of Ernst Chladni," she says. "You could get his books here, and they're pretty useful if you're working with acoustics."

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. I am guessing those things you are making are going to be decorations?"

"Yeah, they're just glass snowflakes."

"Oh, that's pretty neat," Tahno drawls from behind her as he approaches, eyes widening. "What're ya gonna do with the glass? when yer done with it?"

"Don't know yet,"she says. "Probably put them up in the school. Somewhere."

Tahno saunters up and rests his hand on the table, away from her equipment but still giving him a good view of the proceedings. "So, like, what is this? How's the sounds makin' the sand jump? It ain't like no earthbendin' I ever seen."

"Okay," she chuckles. "It's a science called cymatics, the study of visible sound co-vibration. The sound makes the plate vibrate, and the sand on the plate will naturally congregate to areas of minimum displacement. Forms pretty patterns, each corresponding to a particular hertz frequency."

"Cy-ma-tics," Tahno repeats slowly, rolling the word over his tongue. "Huh, awright. The sound makes it shake? Like when I stand too close to a speaker?"

He furrows his brow at the rest. "Minimum displacement? And what's a hertz frequency?"

"Exactly like when you stand next to a speaker," she says. "Minimum displacement is just a fancy way of saying where the plate vibrates the least. And hertz is just the way we measure frequency, the number of times per second that the plate vibrates."

"Wait, it shakes more than once per second? Whoa," Tahno drawls, eyeing the little plate. "So it kinda... shakes in spots, and pushes the sand around. But with sounds."

"Oh, yeah," she chuckles, "It vibrates way, way more than one time a second."

"I can do that with water, maybe a plate of ice, but the moisture would mess up yer sand," Tahno drawls, thinking. "So why study this?"

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