A Musical Chord That Shattered a Huge Glass Bowl

1914

FORCE OF VIBRATION.

A Musical Chord That Shattered a Huge Glass Bowl.

Discussing the proposition that a wineglass can be broken or shattered to pieces by a musical chord, Edgar Lucien Larkin in the New York American says:

"I had a huge glass bowl one foot in diameter resting on its glass stand. The flint glass was from one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch thick. I rosined a violin bow, drew it across the edge, and the entire hemisphere of solid glass disintegrated into hundreds of small pieces. The sound of breaking into fragments was entirely unknown to me, a crackling or grinding, and the bits of glass flew far apart.

"I had used this same bowl before classes for several years with violin bows. But on this particular day the students as well as I were surprised at the breaking and unearthly noise.

"The fact is I happened to vibrate the bowl with its key note — that is, set harmonic rate, which means the precise rate with which it was able to vibrate to send forth that note, for notes are rates of vibration, and they all obey rigid and beautiful harmonic mathematical laws, and these agree with other set and fixed laws."