Cymatics: what you're seeing
When a plate or a dish of water vibrates at one steady note, some parts move a lot and some parts stay still. Sand sprinkled on top gets shaken off the moving parts and comes to rest on the still lines. Those lines draw the pattern.
Where it comes from
- In 1787 Ernst Chladni, a German physicist and musician, ran a violin bow along the edge of a metal plate covered in sand, and published the patterns. They're still called Chladni figures.
- In the 1960s Hans Jenny, a Swiss doctor, filmed sand, water and paste vibrating, and named the study "cymatics", from the Greek for wave.
On this site
- Sand is a square plate. Water is a round dish whose rim stays still.
- The patterns are worked out from the standing-wave equations for each shape, then thousands of grains are shaken and settle, just as real sand does. Nothing is a recording.
- Each in-breath brings a new pattern. Higher notes make finer patterns with more lines.
What it isn't
Cymatics is real physics and lovely to watch. Claims that particular sound patterns or frequencies heal the body aren't supported by good evidence, so this site doesn't make them. What helps is the slow breathing the patterns are pacing. See What the research says.