Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello. I'm doing a cymatic experiment for my science fair project this upcoming week. The problem is I want to make a Chladni Plate but I don't know what am I suppose to do because I want to make the experiment without spending too much money. I don't have the mechanical vibrator or anything because it is not available here in our country. I also saw tutorial from instructables.com but I'm having trouble because there's a lot of comments saying that they broke 3 or more speakers. I'm afraid it will also happen to me. Is there any other cymatic experiment that will make the judges interested about my project? Or can I still simplify the experiment? (except from a tonoscope) But I really want to make that Chladni plate. I want to make the judges happy. I'm an eighth grader from the Philippines by the way. I hope that you can help me. Thank you very much!!!

Hi IrishGwynethRockkss,

After a bit of searching I think I found the instructables project you mentioned. There’s another one that uses a lightweight membrane for the plate. This one is probably not as likely to break because less power is needed to vibrate the membrane.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to- ... -membrane/

Yet another version seems to have some heavy duty wiring added to the voice coil of the speaker. This one may be robust enough to withstand a few experiments.

http://makezine.com/projects/chladni-plate/


I hope this helps and good luck with your project. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman

Thank you so much!

Hello. Can I ask a question? Which of the two options you give is the cheapest one? and the one that will work really well? Thank you very much!

Hi IrishGwynethRockkss,

Both of the options included in my previous post use similar components that you may already have. So the out of pocket costs will depend on which parts you’ll need to go out and buy.

I haven’t worked with either project option and I don’t know if one works better than the other. After reading the instructions for both, I think the one with the plastic membrane may be easier to build.

I hope this helps and good luck with your project. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman

Hello!! Thank you for helping us with our Science fair project! We won in the Science fair!! yey! that would be not possible without your help! Again, Thank you very much!

-Gwyneth

Hi Gwyneth,

Congratulations on your science fair! Great work!

A. Norman