[.ca] Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena (ISBN 1888138076)

A Compendium of Examples of Sound Phenomena:
I first became interested in the patterns sound can generate on the surface of a liquid when I observed beautiful patterns on the surface of a thin layer of water caused by vibrations from the disposal unit of my kitchen sink. I was easily able to reproduce these same patterns as well as others by placing an inverted plastic lid containing a few millimeters of water over a speaker. A function generated attached to an amplifier was used to drive the speaker. It was my search for previous research of this phenomenon that led to the discovery of Hans Jenny's two-volume work titled "Cymatics." On the positive side, this set shows many examples of patterns generated by sound in various media and using various techniques. As such, it represents a nice compendium of examples, and the photographs are visually appealing. However, the work does not represent scientific research into this phenomenon in the modern sense but is more like the exploratory research and categorizing done by the ancient Greeks. No theory is presented that explains the phenomena in terms of mechanics or dynamics and no predictions are made based on theory or observation. For such a modern scientific approach, one needs to look elsewhere. There is some information about this currently active scientific field on the Internet: use search terms such as "capillary waves" and "acoustic flow."