Chladni Grid

The Chladni Grid recreates the famous sand-on-a-plate experiment as a floor. Fine grains of sand gather into symmetric lines and curves, and the pattern slowly slides from one shape into the next, as if the plate were being played at a changing note.

How it works

When a square metal plate vibrates at a resonance, some lines on it stay perfectly still while everything around them shakes. Sand scattered on the plate is thrown off the moving parts and settles on those still lines. Here every grain has its own spot, and the chance of a grain staying there falls off sharply with how hard that spot is shaking, so the sand piles up on the still lines and thins out between them. The plate drifts between two neighbouring resonances, so the lines bend and rejoin continuously. The shaking areas between the lines shimmer softly.

Settings

• Mode N and Mode M pick the resonance: low numbers give a few broad curves, high numbers a dense lace.
• Morph sets how fast the plate drifts to the next pattern; 0 holds it still.
• Grain is the amount of sand on the plate.
• Displace makes the plate itself vibrate in three dimensions.

Use it for

Music and sound visuals, audio product pages, science explainers and calm, meditative floors. For the same physics as moving particles, see Chladni Sand.