Years ago, back when I was hosting Sound of Science on Radio Guerrilla, I stumbled upon this visual masterpiece of a video. What you see in the video is called cymatics, which basically means visualizing sound waves. Absolutely nothing is CGI. All the experiments show how matter (sand, liquid, fire, electricity) reacts to specific audio frequencies.

The Chladni Plate

It is a metal plate attached to a speaker and sprinkled with sand. When the sound hits a certain resonant frequency, the sand is pushed away from the heavily vibrating spots and gathers in the neutral ones. The result? Geometric patterns that instantly form to the beat of the music.

The other experiments in the video

• Water spiral: Stanford attached a hose to a subwoofer. By matching the audio frequency exactly to the camera’s frame rate, he created an optical illusion where the water looks frozen in a zigzag shape. Fun fact: he used chilled vodka instead of water because it looked much better and thicker on camera.

• Rubens tube: Fire dancing to the music. The sound changes the gas pressure inside a drilled pipe, making the flames jump perfectly to the shape of the sound waves.

• Tesla coil: For the epic finale, Nigel wore a Faraday suit, a protective cage made of chainmail, and played a keyboard that triggered real high-voltage lightning bolts.

The biggest challenge: Unlike 99% of music videos out there, the music was actually composed after filming. Since the visual experiments only worked at very precise frequencies (a beautiful sand pattern would only form at exactly 527 Hz, for example), Nigel had to write down those perfect frequencies, turn them into musical notes, and only then build the track around them.

Here’s the video:

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