Does this explain what generates gravity?

A little trick with water. Place three medium size bowls 10” diameter or thereabouts of ice water out in front of speakers all in a row. Next, listen to the sound.

So what does happen to the sound? I can envisage some sort of timpani mode of induced oscillation occurring in a bowl of water at certain frequencies:

Timpani Modes of Vibration.jpg


IIRC, when solving these sort of problems you have to consider the edge boundary condition too:

In general, there are two major types of boundary conditions: fixed-endpoint or Dirichlet boundary conditions, and free-endpoint or Neumann boundary conditions, corresponding to holding the end of a string or allowing it to freely oscillate, respectively.

I have pondered this because loudspeaker membranes work like this too, A corrugated edge speaker is more Dirichlet, a soft rubber surround speaker is more Neumann.

This is also used in string theory for fixed and unbound strings.
 
Water is an incompressible fluid. So, it’s unlikeOy that water in the bowls will act like membranes, especially considering the lack of acoustic energy where the bowls are sitting - the surface of the water is orthogonal to the direction of acoustic waves. So, I would be inclined to wave goodbye to that theory. 👋

Besides the membrane theory doesn’t account for the cold temperature of the water in the bowls, a critical feature of this experiment, cold temperature would make the water even more incompressible. Of course, one test the theory by observing if any ripples appear on the surface of the water, a possible sign of “membrane” action, which they won’t.
 
Last edited:
So what does happen to the sound?

Those three (it must be precisely three of course!) bowls of ice water will lower the air temperature.

The sound will take longer to reach the listener because its speed decreases with air temperature.

The musical frequencies will, however, remain unchanged.

P.S. You will notice that Geoff did not claim the sound would change, he merely asked you to "listen to the sound".

So, nothing to see here. As Elsa sang in Frozen, Let it Go! :cold:
 
Apparently hot water freezes more quickly than room temperature water when both are placed in the freezer at the same time.

Might be nonsense of course but perhaps if the water molecules are zipping around they may more easily be able to settle into the ice crystal line structure in the warmer fluid. I suspect this starts off as a very thin layer on the water surface and then grows more quickly in the warmer water.
Ok this reminded me this
I consume lots of memes but gordan i next level.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Bonsai
I always like to remind myself what we are talking about with these Physics discussions:

The Standard Model.jpg


Thus today I listened to Fields Medal winner Edward Witten discussing his illustrious applied mathematics career with Jim Al-Khalili:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001rycq

You only have to create an account with an email and a password to listen to this stuff on the BBC, though I don't know how available it is internationally..

Deeply interesting, and I remember how excited we all were in the Physics department when the J/Psi Charmed meson was discovered in October 1974.

String theory naturally creates the graviton, though it started as a theory of hadron Physics. Witten is famous for his unifying M-Theory amongst other things.

Witten reckons we might get a grip on it all in about a 100 years!

Also interesting was Paul Murdin, who was stricken with Polio as a child, talking about his work on discovering the first Black Hole detected, Cygnus X-1:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qdln

Cygnus X-1 Artist Impression.jpg


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_X-1

He was a pal of Patrick Moore it seems! Small World.