Resonance

[labbygail]

I discovered something really cool! When I sing certain notes, the doorbell rings! Really! Our doorbell consists of three long metal dangly pipes, and I can make each one vibrate if I sing exactly its pitch. (I noticed it when I was working on my high G, which is lovely when I'm practicing by myself but horribly screechy whenever I have it in a

Comments

[anonymous]

It's called sympathetic vibration. The doorbell sympathizes with your high G. :D

--Mom

[terransot]

Coool!!!!

That's pretty good control on your part.

[ruakh]

Awesome!

[melster]

That's so *cool*!

[anonymous]

If you have some arbitrary short pulse of noise, like a clap or a bang, the fourier transform is ~ constant in frequency-space. I think this means that if your voice is enough of a calamity you can get almost anything to ring, although it might have to be a loud clap for it to have a high intensity at any given frequency. Maybe the more impressive thing is that your voice is pure enough in tone that you have to be really close to the correct pitch to get it to work. For some experimental verification: 1. try clapping loudly next to them (maybe bang some pots and pans) and 2. try to get the husband to get them to ring by singing -- maybe it'll be easier for him to get them to ring a little, but harder for him to get them to ring a lot. Report your findings back to us for peer-review.

~