Non-sequitur science lesson

I came across an interesting sort of science project in a book a little while ago, something I know I haven't heard of before, perhaps some of you readers have. It's called cymatics, a sort of science first discovered by a Hungarian physicist named Ernst Chladni in the 1770s. He found a way to show the vibrations made by sound in physical form. Scattering sand on metal disks and drawing a bow across the disks like on a violin would cause geometric patterns to appear in the sand, patterns created as the sound vibration moved through the disks.
A century later, Margaret Watts-Hughes tried Chlandi's project herself, experimenting with diferent materials put on the disks, as well as different musical instruments. She found the best instrument was her voice. She, unlike Chlandi, took photos of the patterns created on the disks, and I'd show you some of said pictures, but search-engine scrounging hasn't been able to turn anything up. Amazingly.

The book I found this out in was a big ol' fat book about crop circles by Freddy Silva, a crop circle nut if ever there was one. Silva has a theory that sound could be creating the crop circles, that they could be cymatic patterns imprinted in grainfields. I don't know about you, but I found that idea pretty interesting, although it could be totally nuts. The interesting thing is, though, that Silva found some crop circles that look quite similar to some cymatic patterns. For example:







Anyway, that concludes today's non-sequitur science lesson.