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A DIY Cymatics Display
A simple vibrating platform can be made from a piezoelectric sounder mounted on a plastic tube. The piezo sounder can be connected to a signal generator or even a PC sound card. By placing a small amount of powder or fluid on the sounder, various patterns and motions can be seen depending upon the applied frequencies.
This image shows a pattern formed by a fine powder vibrating at a single, mid audio range frequency. Depending upon the size of your sounder and the materials used, the patterns will emerge at a range of frequencies.
Sometimes a pattern will only remain stable at one exact frequency, whereas other patterns will emerge over a broad range frequencies. By mixing signals together more complex patterns can be formed. If you don't have signal generators handy try using classical music as it contains a great deal of harmonics and mathematical ratios within the sounds. Other types of music may work too, but the drum beats tend to destabilize the patterns.
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Different materials will respond in different ways to the vibrations due to varying density or particle size and shape. Materials can also be separated or made to flow through each other.
This diagram shows a flat Piezo sounder glued to the top of a small section of tubing for support. The connecting wires should be supported by attaching them to the tube. It is important that the wires are not tight as they may prevent the piezo sounder from oscillating fully. The wires can then be connected to an signal generator such as the DIY signal generator, power pulse modulator, or even a PC headphone output.
There should only be a pinch of powder such as salt placed on the sounder to see the effect. The sound should be adjusted whilst watching the surface to see how it responds. Make sure the sounder is as level as possible otherwise the powder will slide off before any patterns are formed.
You may notice that a certain frequencies the powder will jump into the air quite suddenly, destroying any patterns. This occurs due to resonance, and turing down the volume should allow you to form patterns at the resonant frequencies.
Liquids will form patterns with a very high resolution. High audio frequencies can create very fine pattern, barley visible to the naked eye. A laser beam, reflected by the vibrating surface can be used to magnify the effect. The reflected laser beam can produce an image on a screen, which will represent the vibrating surface.
The projected images can look like 3D holograms, and it is often quite difficult to see how the projected pattern relates to the actual pattern on the reflective material.
You can make much larger versions of this project using a speaker with a flat playe replacing part of the cone. Details are shown in the comments section below. To drive a speaker you will need an amplifier to give a good supply of power to the speaker. An alternative is to use a high power signal generator such as a power pulse controller.
If the piezo transducer is driven at very high, or ultrasonic frequencies, and with a large amplitude it is possible to 'atomize' liquids such as water. This creates a fine mist that resembles steam in appearance. Such mists are actually tiny droplets suspended in the air yet they behave as if they were all part of a single dense fluid medium.
The information provided here can not be guaranteed as accurate or correct. Always check with an alternate source before following any suggestions made here.
I have not found a way to use these for large scale versions yet... but its cheap and easy to find.
They work using special material that expands and contracts when you apply a voltage. This is known as the piezoelectric effect.
You can buy them from Maplin Electronics in the UK, or any similar type of electronics supplier.
The wire that comes soldered on to your sounder are probably light and flexible enough. You just need to support them in some way so that the weight of your stereo cable does not pull on the sounder. This diagram just shows a view under the sounder where the cables are glued to the support.
There are also devices you can buy that effectivley turn any flat surface (like a table or window) into a speaker.
Is it possible to achieve the same cymatic effects by putting a metal sheet on top of a big speaker??
and when u say connect the wires to sound card what do u mean? can u draw a diagram to help me out?
Also.. do u know of any materials that reacts with sound? as in changes or is affected by sound?
U can email me at yudabong@gmail.com
thanks so so much!
It's possible that you could jut place a metal sheet on top of a large speaker, but it would probably need to be very loud. A plastic sheet would probably vibrate more easily and allow a better frequency response.
An interesting material you can ues in cymatics experiments is a "non newtonian fluid" such as cornflour / cornstarch mixed with water.
Non newtonian fluids get stiffer when they are moved or compressed. This allows you to produce many interesing effects like shown in this video.
Thanks!!!
I suspect that you may be able to accelerate a small amount of fluid enough to see something, but I don't think it would be the same.
I think your motor suggestion would be able to provide larger forces on the fluid, but it may be tricky to set up safley as the motor would need to be resonably powerful. The motor would need to be secured very firmly by bolting it down to the surface with a bracket. Tape or glue would be insufficient.
The 50mm size is plenty large enough to get an idea of how the effect works. Smaller ones will work too, but it may get a little difficult to see what is happening.
Some patterns will only form at specific frequencies, so adjustments need to be made quite slowly in order to obseve the effect.
At certian frequencies the surface used will resonate, and this will produce very pronounced movements. It's even possible to cause all your particles to leap up and off the surface.
A simple test may be to add a pinch of salt to the surface, then brifly sweep through your frequency range. If at no point do the salt particles leap up, or make any large motion, you should assume that the vibrations are too weak, or that the material is damping the standing waves.
Also, square waves will cause harmonic vibrations too. This means for example; Your square wave input is 1 kHz, you will see 2 kHz, 3 kHz, etc as vibrations, but the harmonics are of lower amplitude. These harmonics may help or hinder the pattern formation.
With a sine wave, you have more precise control, but you will only see simple cricles as the pattern.
I noticed one particularly interesting effect when using salt particles on a piezo sounder. Very occasionaly a lone salt crystal would begin to move along the surface, gradually disintegrating and leaving a trail behind it.
I have been using Reaktor 5 to produce clean waves, once I have the correct system built I will be using this, I would recomend this to anyone looking to make and experiment with waves.
If I stepped up the voltage to overcome the impedance, much of the energy was lost to eddy currents and heat.
Maybe a specialy made solenoid with a light weight design or laminated core would be more effective.
A laptop and amplified speaker will work fine at audio frequencies, and it will allow you to mix different sounds together. A seperate signal generator will just allow you to extend the frequency range available (but will only work at a single frequency).
Here is an alternative to using piezo sounders for a cymatics experiment. These experiments were done using a large speaker that has been modified so that it can contain powders and liquids. The speaker chosen is an 8 inch 4 ohm type that was removed from an old Hi-Fi system. The 'bump' from the middle part of the cone is removed so that a flat piece of plastic can be glued in its place. This now forms a flat vibrating platform, and the cone serves to keep everything from dropping off the edge.
To drive the speaker, a signal generator and an amplifier are needed. A PC, some software and Hi-Fi system would be adequate, but we used a separate variable frequency source and a 12V 200W audio amplifier. It was necessary to have the volume very high, particularly at higher frequencies.
Large Modified Speaker and Salt
This is a large and powerful speaker, but it is not able to produce the very high frequencies that can be made with a piezo sounder. As the surface vibrates, standing waves are formed on its surface. For these standing waves to be able to form patterns in the salt, they must have a wavelength that is smaller than the width of the vibrating surface.
In this video you can see that as the frequency is increased (therefore making the wavelength smaller), more rings can be seen. This is because more wave nodes can fit on the surface.
Non-newtonian Fluid (Cornflour + Water)
We managed to get this experiment to work by using the same modified speaker as shown above. Not much would happen at higher frequencies (presumably because the amplitude was too low), but at low frequencies the speaker and amplifier worked very well and could accelerate the fluid very hard.
The mixture is about 1 teaspoon of water for each heaped teaspoon of cornflour/cornstarch. You will have to carefully tweak the amount of water you use until you have the correct consistency. You will know it is correct when it goes solid when you try stirring it. Just make sure its not so thick that you can't pour it from the container.
In this clip you can see that at the correct frequency, the fluid will start to bunch up in the middle. If this bump is disturbed, it sets off a chain reaction of weird creeping and morphing motions in the fluid.
A piezo sounder will work at very high frequencies and thefore make patterns with a finer detail, but the sounders themselves are often quite small.
A speaker will be able to produce more vibration power but at lower frequencies.
You could add different colours of sand that also has different sized (or weight) granules. The vibrations would then seperate out the different colours in your pattern.
You could also try a square or other shaped surface. The vibrations are reflected from the edges and will therefore make different patternsd
but what we stil do not understand is that if we want to use more sand, can we glue a larger plastic surface onto the sounder and use that as our surface on which the sand will be vibrating. after reading all these comments, we still do not understand the difference between a transucer and a piezo sounder... which one should we use if we want to vibrate more sand and create visible patterns in our particles?
once again thanks so much for your feedback and appreciate it sooo much.. you really are helping us THANK YOU!
If you want a nice clear display of the effect, I would suggest using a large bass speaker like the one shown in the above video clips. This will be capable of moving much more sand. A perspex/plastic sheet will be fine for this. You could do a simple test by just connecting a Hi-Fi to a PC then tip up the speakers, remove the cover, and just place a piece of plastic on top. You should be able to make some basic patterns this way by using a sine wave generator on your PC. Further improvements could then be made by fixing it more securley to the cone so it is free to vibrate.
What I'd like to find is a way to use the whole audio range, with something powerful enough to show strong effects. However, from reading the comments, it seems the bass speaker will work fine up to perhaps 5,000Hz (though many seem not to work at less than 20Hz), while above that, a piezosounder is necessary. However, it seems too that the piezosounders are available only in relatively small sizes, so not very effective at making good, clear patterns. Equally it seems the solenoids don't work too well; so, is there is any way of building a device that will vibrate a surface enough to make patterns visible all through the audio range? Clearly Jenny did it with the crystal oscillators, and John Reid has made something at http://www.soundhealingresource.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=1, but that device is about 10 grand in Sterling! Any slightly cheaper way to achieve a similar effect?
Still a great page, BTW!
Maybe the soundbug would work better if it were attached to an ampifier, but then there is a risk of over powering it. Getting the full frequency range from one device on a large surface may be tricky. I suppose you would need to transfer the vibrations from a speaker and a piezo device to a surface. I guess Jenny used custom built equipment which will not be in the budget of a DIY project. If you just want to move small particles, then a piezo sounder should be good enough, allthough you may need an amplifier. I use this 200W amplifier from Maplin as it will drive bass speakers and even piezo sounders at ultrasonic frequencies. You can connect your audio source to this and it will step up the power considerably. It's also short circuit protected, but it will easily destroy speakers and transducers if it's turned up too loud.
With an amplifier you should be able to get enough power to transfer the vibrations to larger surfaces. You could extend the size of the piezo type display at the top of this page, by simply gluing a larger surface to it with epoxy resin (araldite).
Piezos work well at high freqencies which have smaller wavelengths. This means you can get very fine pattenrs even on a small surface. You will need a small amount of fine powder to see the patterns. Just crushed salt would work fine. Make sure the surface is dry and warm (room temp or above) so that moisture doesn't cause the fine particles to stick. If you have an ultrasonic frequency source then you can even make patterns without having to hear any sound.
I noticed that you wanted to duplicate the cornstarch fingers from texas institute.
based on the info they provided in the clip I derrived this
they said 120Hz at 25g acceleration is 800 ft/sec(sq) using a simple distance formula one can find that the distance traveled by the shaker is (1/12) inches. make sure that is right and make sure the frequency is 120Hz then alter the viscousity of the fluid until you get results.
I have not tried this yet so it is only in theory, but it should work.
Thank you for your continuous feedback!
Patterns will not appear at all frequencies, but if you can sweep through a broad range, then you should see some circular patterns.
Use just a few fine particles of salt at first so you can check that the transducer is being driven loud enough by your ipod. If you still see no movement then you may need a more powerful audio source.
Thanks again!
I would just like to thank you for all the info. Its been extremely helpful on building my own mechanical wave driver. I have posted an instructable detailing the construction here.
Dont go spending 0 when you can build one easily.
"Da Vinci" Church Reveals Secret Code
Would love to hear whether anyone finds something workable.
I never knew it was called cymatics! My toploading washing machine has always produced concentric circles in water in a bowl placed on top when the washing machine is spinning at its fastest. Also, nearby empty cat food tins with water in, waiting to be washed, catch the vibrations and get concentric circles. What an interesting field of dicovery!
The plate must be flat smooth and level.
If the salt is jumping, gently turn down the volume so it meerly jiggles around on the surface.
oh and what started it was the question about pizeo whatever and transducers...i suppose a transducer is something intending to transfer the sound energy into something else (atmosphere/pool of water/cornstarch/beef whatever) while the pizeo-electric crystal is a crystal that vibrates under electrical current in a predictable fashion...they are all one and the same though pending someone with a PhD insisting I’m wrong and proving it. If you have anything cool or enlightening(IE i said something you feel is inacurate or does not take into account something id like to account for.) to share feel free to contact me at myspace.com/elemental_construct
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After seeing a few clips of cymatics (specifically the video "Cymatics: Bringing Matter to Life with Sound" - found on youtube) I've got all these experiments running through my head that I'm really excited to try. Before I get started though (and ruin a perfectly good speaker and amp and whatever else you can screw up) I want to learn more about how amps and speakers work so I can have more control when I'm constructing my cymatics device.
Do you have any suggestions?
http://sound.westhost.com/amp-basics.htm
You can read more about shepard tones, scales and Shepard-Risset Glissandos in the Wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone
Thanks
Then I tryed to higher freq. 800-2000 but sand and salt did not perform figures as they suposed to do, only circle on the center appeared and behave again almost same on all swept frq
WHAT am I doing wrong !!?
As for sand and salt, you will have to try different amounts, also diffeent shaped vibrating surfaces will make differntly shaped patterns.
Maybe a fluid vapour or particle suspension would be best.
I was hoping to have maybe a speaker attached to it or a piezo on the bottom of the plexiglass, and those are connected to an arduino board. Would you know what the specifications of speakers I would need to achieve those effects or maybe a piezo buzzer would be easier?
How can i place a laser in the vibrating surface ?
The screen will obviously be placed vertically close to the horizontal vibrating surface, correct?
Please help, i'm really interested in doing this as a project.
Thanx.
High frequencies will create tiny ripple patterns on the liquids surface. A laser beam reflected from the surface will be distorted by the patterns in the liquids surface. You just shine the laser from whatever angle fits your setup and place the screen at an equal and opposite angle.
Will the surface disrupt the soundwaves too much?
If I do need to submerge the speaker, are you aware of a good approach to waterproofing it?
Thanks so much. This website and discussion is really great.
1. Is it better to use an audio speaker or a piezoelectric (sounder or bender)element?
Currently I have a midrange car speaker (4ohm) and a 2 inch piezo. Being that it is small compared to your example. It seems like all the piezo's are small.
2. I currently have a 12 volt car stereo amp with 200 watts peak, bridgeable for 2 100 watt speakers or one sub-woofer speaker.
3. I also have a power supply to take the voltage (120 v USA) to 12 volts and is capable to deliver 10 amps. If I am right to get the wattage, I took 12 volts X 10 amps= 120 watts to drive the speaker..Is 100-120 watts enough to make silica sand move???
4. I have a software program called audacity which allows you to input the one frequency to listen too. Will the cymatic device handle more than one frequency, I would like to also show various harmonics too.
4. I know the thickness of the plate (plexiglas) is a consideration, which thickness is best?
Bottomline, What do you think is the best (although money is a factor) way to build a Cymatic Device?
Thanks, Vic
2. Is that a question?
3. The power you need depend on how much mass you want to vibrate. This mass includes that of your surface.
4. Yes multiple frequencies will make more complex or moving patterns.
5. The thickness and material type depend on your input power and the frequencies you are most intersted in. Sound travels at different speeds in different mateials (faster in more dense materials and more efficiently in harder ones).
I would start out with things you have lying a round to make it as cheap as possible so that you can learn about how everything responds.
I believe the density and elasticity of Lexan would be the best and safest to use besides a metal plate. Your thoughts? Thanks so much!
You will need to determine this yourself.
Does anyone know what or where this device can be obtained?
Thanks!
There's quite a few of those devices that will vibrate a surface. I can't remember the name of the one I saw originally, but a Google search for "turn any surface into speaker" shows some names; IceKube, sound bug, k-box.
For those who would like to get some good cymatics patterns without needing to do any wiring or rebuilding of electronic components, I have had success making some good cymatics patterns with a simple wooden box which has a membrane stretched over the top and an amp inside.
Here is how I did it: I took a square box made from plywood that was 2'x2', stretched some latex over the top (you can get black latex by the yard at certain 'goth' sites) - held it there with a large rubber band, the kind you can get at a hardware store.
Then, drilled some holes in the side so that the amp wires could go thru the wall of the box, and placed the amp inside in the middle. I hooked the input up to my computer and ran some music into it, put salt on the membrane and there you go.
I have found that the best surfaces for creating nice, intricate patterns so far are: thin latex material or 1/8" thick steel or brass; but I'm sure there are lots of other surfaces that work. This is in my experience...I also have created a DIY video for making your own tonascope (for those who are even less inclined to use electronics but still want to see some designs, this an "unplugged" version of a cymatics device). you can get the tonascope video instructions for free here: http://www.cymaticsounder.com (email subscription required)
Thanks again, --Jodina