GART

Chladni Figures

Sand on a vibrating plate gathers along its still lines. Here an idealised standing-wave field reveals those lines directly, with nearby contours forming a delicate echo.

Chladni Figures: Sand on a vibrating plate gathers along its still lines. Here an idealised standing-wave field reveals those lines directly, with nearby contours forming a delicate echo.Chladni Figures: Sand on a vibrating plate gathers along its still lines. Here an idealised standing-wave field reveals those lines directly, with nearby contours forming a delicate echo.

About this pattern

Ernst Chladni, 1787 · idealised standing-wave figures

Chladni Figures, standing wave, drawn by GART: Sand on a vibrating plate gathers along its still lines. Here an idealised standing-wave field reveals those lines directly, with nearby contours forming a delicate echo.
Chladni Figures · CC BY 4.0

The drawing uses a cosine-mode approximation on a square, not a full elastic-plate simulation. With blend at zero, the central contour is the nodal set. Echo lines follow nearby field values; blending a second mode is an artistic extension rather than a single physical resonance.

TopicsStanding wave (opens in a new tab)Cymatics (opens in a new tab)

Behind the mathematics

Ernst Chladni1756–1827

Standing-wave figures

German physicist and musician who made standing-wave nodes visible by scattering particles over vibrating plates.