Live data from Hacker News

The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand

thisiscolossal.com

11–20 of 40 posts

Re: The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand

#11
post #6

Bold title for WWDC day.

Because some shiny new gadget will impress you more than a beautiful visualization of the mathematical structure of nature?

That was tongue-in-cheek (mostly...you never know with WWDC).

This video reminds me a bit of A New Kind of Science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science): some of the phenomena Wolfram discusses gave me the same "holy! how does this happen in nature" kind of reaction.

Re: The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand

#13
post #4

It is interesting, but it's a standard way of demonstrating normal modes, or the applications of eigenvectors. I would think most physics and engineering undergraduates have studied this. That's not to say you shouldn't watch it, but just to put it in perspective - this is a topic studied in the 1st/2nd year of university, not a poorly-understood topic for research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mode

I'm a cs person and never encountered this in school. Is this taught in engineering? Typical course names?

Re: The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand

#14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some shiny new gadget will impress you more than a beautiful visualization of the mathematical structure of nature?

That was tongue-in-cheek (mostly...you never know with WWDC). This video reminds me a bit of A New Kind of Science ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science ): some of the phenomena Wolfram discusses gave me the same "holy! how does this happen in nature" kind of reaction.

Sorry for coming on so strong. And for being that guy who misses the tone.

Re: The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand

#16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was tongue-in-cheek (mostly...you never know with WWDC). This video reminds me a bit of A New Kind of Science ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science ): some of the phenomena Wolfram discusses gave me the same "holy! how does this happen in nature" kind of reaction.

Sorry for coming on so strong. And for being that guy who misses the tone.

No worries, we're all that guy sometimes.

+1 for emoji support in HN comments. (Also ironic...mostly.)

Re: The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand

#17
post #4

It is interesting, but it's a standard way of demonstrating normal modes, or the applications of eigenvectors. I would think most physics and engineering undergraduates have studied this. That's not to say you shouldn't watch it, but just to put it in perspective - this is a topic studied in the 1st/2nd year of university, not a poorly-understood topic for research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mode

Forgive my ignorance, but I don't have a physics or engineering background. Given it's a well understood phenomenon, is there some way of generating mathematically what the patterns will be for a given plate shape and frequency?

Re: The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand

#20
post #4

It is interesting, but it's a standard way of demonstrating normal modes, or the applications of eigenvectors. I would think most physics and engineering undergraduates have studied this. That's not to say you shouldn't watch it, but just to put it in perspective - this is a topic studied in the 1st/2nd year of university, not a poorly-understood topic for research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mode

I'm a cs person and never encountered this in school. Is this taught in engineering? Typical course names?

As a math person, I look at this and think "Fourier series".

I encountered the ideas in both Classical Mechanics 1 (third year physics course where I took it) and Differential Equations (third year math course where I took it).

It is still a nice visualization.

Post reply on HN