(no subject)

[electro_kinetic]

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.

Comments

[hot_water]

"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?"

[electro_kinetic]

"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."

[hot_water]

"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."

[electro_kinetic]

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

[hot_water]

"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?"