Cymatics is the study of visible sound and vibration, typically on the surface of a plate, diaphragm, or membrane. Directly visualizing vibrations involves using sound to excite media often in the form of particles, pastes, and liquids. The apparatus employed can be simple, such as a Chladni Plate or advanced such as the CymaScope, a laboratory instrument that makes visible the inherent geometries within sound and music. Hans Jenny (1904-1972) is considered the father of cymatics. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Dec 18, 2009 - 8 comments

Clark Little takes amazing photos of waves. See more at his website.
posted by various on Mar 23, 2009 - 42 comments

Dolphins at SeaWorld Orlando make and play with bubble rings. Others learn by watching. (SLYP) via [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on Mar 18, 2009 - 17 comments

Riding the Waves of interest in MVC web frameworks such as Rails, Django, TurboGears, and Cake, comes the latest entrant: Ruby Waves. Interesting features include request lambdas, hot patchable, nestable templates, app reusability, and decoupled controller/view. Is the proliferation of MVC projects helping to push innovation forward? Or pointlessly reinventing the wheel? (via RubyInside)
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Feb 29, 2008 - 39 comments

Quantum Mechanics: Myths and Facts (pdf), a recently-updated paper on the Cornell arXiv peer-review site. By Hrvoje Nikolić of the Rudjer Bošković Institute in Croatia. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious on Feb 25, 2008 - 47 comments

September 30th, 2002, scientists intercepted a 10 minute radio burst from the galactic center, 26,000 Light Years away. 77 minutes passed, and it repeated. And again. The signal repeated 5 times that evening.

Some think those signals are weird mysterious. Others think they are interesting mysterious.
posted by Lord_Pall on Oct 25, 2006 - 63 comments

You can drift, you can dream, even walk write on water
Researchers at Akishima Laboratories have developed a device that uses waves to draw text and pictures on the surface of water. Here is a PDF file about the project (I think it is in Japanese, but it has pretty pictures!)
posted by lenny70 on Jul 28, 2006 - 16 comments

Kiteboarding is an argument for the existence of God. And even if, like me, you don’t buy that particular argument, it’s still insanely cool. Armed with a kite, a harness and a board, you can show up your local skate rats (soundtrack includes language that is Not, strictly speaking, Safe For Work), fly over snow, ride waves and even indulge yourself over plain-vanilla dry land. Be careful, though. If angered, the wind could easily take you into orbit.
posted by jason's_planet on Jul 13, 2006 - 27 comments

Ripple Tank Simulation is a delightful, mesmeric java applet simulation of a ripple tank. It demonstrates two dimensional wave phenomena such as interference, diffraction, refraction, resonance, phased arrays, and the Doppler effect (do try the 3D view). From Paul Falstad's fantastic collection of Math, Physics and Engineering Applets.
posted by MetaMonkey on Jan 25, 2006 - 14 comments

Java applets to help visualize various concepts in math, physics, and engineering
posted by Gyan on Sep 9, 2005 - 13 comments

Resonata - A Wave Machine [Java]
posted by Gyan on Jun 21, 2005 - 13 comments

Surf's Up! While many of us in North America are battling freezing rain, sleet, snow, and other sub-zero madness, the folks on the north shore of Oahu are enjoying their own December weather phenomenon.
posted by Crackerbelly on Dec 20, 2004 - 15 comments

This cornstarch, it vibrates. (wmv 4MB)
posted by stbalbach on May 19, 2004 - 23 comments

Heheheheheheee wipe oooout! The biggest moving mountain ever surfed.
posted by thedailygrowl on Apr 22, 2004 - 16 comments

Heavy Seas is an all too brief gallery of terrifying photos of huge waves crashing down around large boats & drilling rigs. I wish it were a little longer, but I did think the photos were impressive, as one who has never been at sea in very rough weather.
posted by jonson on Mar 9, 2003 - 29 comments

Traffic Waves [via /usr/bin/girl] I've always had a suspicion that traffic was a wave phenomenon. This is interesting theory. [more inside...]
posted by plinth on Dec 21, 2000 - 15 comments