Welcome to Brainstuff the production of I Heart Radio, Hey, brain Stuff. Lauren vocal bomb here it's the operatic equivalent of the slip on the banana peal scene. The soprano on stage hits a high note so long in piercing that it cracks the opera glasses of the elegant Dowager in the box seat. Hollywood can do that with a trick of editing. But is it possible in real life? Well, yes it is, but so is being struck by lightning.
Both require rare convergences of particular conditions and to understand these conditions and how they work together a crash course and acoustics is an order. Sound is acoustic energy, like electricity. Sound energy travels through substances in waves, which excites these substances particles and causes them to vibrate at a certain frequency. A frequency refers to the number of waves passing through a given point over a given period of time, and
we measure frequent see and hurts. One hurts equals one wave per second. Meanwhile, every substance has a natural or resonant frequency, the frequency at which its own molecules vibrate. For example, suppose your bass guitar playing neighbor cracks the plaster on your walls when they play a low driving baseline.
The quality of your neighbors speakers also affect the quality of the sound, but basically, the frequency of a bass guitar's lower deeper notes run from forty to fifty hurts, and thus the plasters resonant frequency must fall somewhere in that range. Because when a substance encounters a frequency it matches, it absorbs the energy rather than reflecting it. Glass shattering waves carry more energy they're shorter and choppier, thus more of them pass through per second at roughly five hundred
and fifty six hurts. To shatter glass, the notes frequency must be the same as that of the glass. That's one condition. The note also has to be loud quality known as intensity. Intensity is measured in decibels, while conversational tones average fifty to sixty decibels. A trained vocalist might have the pipes to approach the approximately a hundred and five decibels needed to break glass. Even then they would have to be so close as to risk serious facial cuts.
If the glass does explode, more likely a boost of electronic amplification would be needed. Finally, the glass must be strategically selected. A wine glass is a good choice. It's fine and thin, unlike say beer stein, which maximizes the
amount of stress per particle. An empty glass cracks more readily, although less dramatically than one containing water or wine air, being less dense, the liquid carries the sound better, and if you can find a wine glass with a flaw in its structure, even an invisible one, that helps by providing a weak spot. Incidentally, real world tests involving resident
frequencies offer more than an excuse to shatter glass. Resident frequency is the basis of ultrasonic testing, which is used to determine the safety of structures ranging from pipelines to airplanes. Ultrasonic testing is a type of non destructive testing which allows engineers to monitor the integrity of construction materials as where and while they're being used, which is preferable to otherwise dismantling a building or airplane for analysis in a laboratory.
Today's episode is based on the article can You really Shatter a Glass? With a high note on how stuff works dot com, written by Christine Benzen. Brain Stuff is a production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.