What Is Resonance? Why can a singer break glass using his/her own voice?

Question

Can someone explain to me what resonance means without copying Wikipedia?

And why can singers break glass using his/her own voice?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Resonance is a phenomenon in which if 2 objects r kept close 2 each other & 1 object is made 2 vibrate,de other vibrated wit same frequency & amplitude.
For example,if we on de speakers in a closed room with high sound,we feel vibrations and glass also vibrates.If a car id travellin wit constant speed,a rattling sound can b heard due 2 resonance between its engine & body.

As sound is a mechanical wave carrying energy,it has power to break some things with its energy.Wen a singer sings wit high pitch,de sound travels frm his mouth & travels 2 glass thus breaking it.

Answer 2

Resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude at a certain frequency. This frequency is known as the system's resonance frequency. When damping is small, the resonance frequency is approximately equal to the natural frequency of the system, which is the frequency of free vibrations.

A resonant object, whether mechanical, acoustic, or electrical, will probably have more than one resonance frequency (especially harmonics of the strongest resonance). It will be easy to vibrate at those frequencies, and more difficult to vibrate at other frequencies. It will "pick out" its resonance frequency from a complex excitation, such as an impulse or a wideband noise excitation. In effect, it is filtering out all frequencies other than its resonance.

So whenever the singer is able to sing in a frequency which matches with the resonant frequency of the glass, the glass vibrates with maximum amplitude possible. Since glass is not a very elastic substance it breaks.

There are instances in the past where even bridges collasped due to resonance.

When soldiers cross a bridge they are told not to walk in rythem / tandem.

Answer 3

OK, so you tap a glass with you fork and it produces a certain frequency ring due to its shape & composition, let's say it's an F#.
Now subject the glass to a loud noise; it wants to vibrate due to the sound energy, but it can only vibrate an F#. If the noise is not F# then it is not "in sync" with the glass. The ring of the glass and the frequency of the noise are constantly going in and out of phase. The only way the glass can break is for it to experience a super strong ring in F#.
Now change the noise to an F#; it doesn't matter if it's in the same octave. When the glass is ringing at the peak of the wave the noise is also at the peak of its wave. This increases the amplitude of the ring until the glass finally breaks.
That's the gist of resonance.
Roll Tide

Answer 4

Many objects, due to their shape and the material they are made of, have a natural frequency they like to vibrate at. Resonance is what happens when an outside energy source, vibrating at this frequency, or one of its harmonics, causes the object to start vibrating itself. Because the frequencies match peaks and valleys, constructive reinforcement makes the vibration in the object grow larger. Like pushung someone on a swing, if you time it appropriately, pushing makes them swing higher.

A singer that can do this has excellent pitch control, and good purity of pitch (very few people can do it without amplification). Vibration like this causes the object to flex at particular points. Eventually, the size of the resonant vibration can become too great for the material to withstand the flexing, and it breaks at the point of maximum stress.

You can picture how a resonating glass flexes by using a styrofoam cup. Squeeze the cup in line with, then at right angles to, the line the sound would be traveling. The break will usually start at one of the 45-degree angles.

Answer 5

Resonance, in terms of sound, is when sound waves combine with each other and amplify. Basically sound is a pressure wave in the air. This wave has a specific frequency, but its amplitude, or loudness, can vary (for a specific pitch). What happens with music for instance, say in an acoustic guitar, they make the inside the right volume so that when waves bounce around inside, they can combine with each other and amplify.

So basically resonance occurs when the wave hits a wall at the top or bottom of the wave pattern, because when it hits off it basdically makes a reflected pattern, and becomes bigger.

The reason glass breaks is because of this pattern. When the wave enters the glass, the glass vibrates. If you get to the right pitch, within the glass the wave (as long as its the right pitch) will bounce off the walls of the glass and amplify the wave. If amplified enough, it can shatter the glass, because it vibrates so intensely. Singers can do this, but it usually has to be a really high pitch and very loud to begin with.

And was the poster above me drunk?

Answer 6

Resonance is associated with the natural response of a system to an external input.

The simplest case to visualize is motion or deflection, but it can also be applied to electrical flow or any other cyclic response behavior.

Thake the case of s simple pendulum oscillating between two points. For a given pendulum legth and mass, the system has a characteristic period (time to go back and forth) given in time units. The inverse of that period is the number of cycles the pendulum completes per unit time (cycles per second)
If you "set the pendulum" (assume for now it is frictionless hinge) to oscillate, it will go back and forth to the same high point at the same frequency (called simple harmonic motion)
That is the "natural frequency" of the system. If you push the pendulum with a pulse that matches the natural frequency, the system will continue to pick up energy, and move to a higher point, at the same frequency.
Structures have this same behavior, where the "natural frequency of vibration" corresponds to the frequency at which the structure will vibrate. If there is an external excitation which matches that frequency, the system is dais to be "driven at resonance" and the system will increase it's response in an exterme manner until you reach extremes. iIn the case of a glass cup which is being driven by a tuned sound frequency matching the frequency of the glass shell, the shell will oscillate at latger and larger deflections until the large stresses in the glass, owing to the induced deflections, causes it to break.
To drive a system at resonance (i.e. the singer) it is not required to drive it with a lot of force/energy, only that the frequency of the driving input match the natural frequency of the system. Electrical systems which have resistors, capacitors, inductors can also be resonated by varying the frequency of the alternating voltage or current.

Answer 7

well, each material has its own natural frequency... that is, the frequency at which its molecules vibrate. different materials have different frequencies. now.. when you play a musical instrument, like a guitar or piano, you also produce waves, vibrating at different frequencies, or notes. a singer also produces waves of different frequencies. when the waves emitted by a musical instrument, or a singer, has the same frequency as a material.. say glass, then there would be resonance. the glass would resonate to its normal vibrating frequency as induced by the waves from the singers voice. it is interesting to observe that glass resonates at a specific note only...

Answer 8

A singer can break a glass with their voice; however it is not a simple matter of how loud the sound is or how high pitched. There is a specific frequency that must be hit to break a glass. (velocity divided by wavelength). I am not sure how you would go about learning this, but I suppose it could be a learned talent.

Answer 9

Resonance

One such element is resonance. If you have ever stretched a string across a cardboard box and plucked it, you likely noticed the resultant timbre did not sound like a fine acoustic guitar. That is because cardboard boxes do not have the same resonating characteristics as both the material and shape of a guitar body. When a guitar string is plucked, it vibrates and creates a rich spectrum of harmonic partials. The string itself is called the excitation source. The disturbed air molecules cause the guitar body to vibrate through sympathetic vibrations. The larger vibrating surface area creates higher amplitudes by causing more substantially more air to move.

The guitar body does not proportionately amplify all of the frequencies of the string. Instead, some frequencies are amplified more than others. This quality is called resonance. Unless instruments are able to change their shape with each note, most exhibit a complex of many resonant frequencies that do not change, or are fixed—the specific complex of resonances are called formants and those that do not change are called fixed formants. When different frequencies are applied to these fixed resonances, some partials may be excited more than others—this is part of what gives instruments both their overall tone quality and also their registral characteristics i.e. they have noticeably different tone qualities playing low pitches than playing high ones, since differing partials of their spectra are being enhanced. Cellists are familiar with a ‘wolf tone,’ which is a particular pitch in which there are virtually no lower partials resonated, creating an unpleasant 'dead' result (when purchasing an instrument, cellists look for ones where the wolf tone falls in between equal-tempered pitches). Digital samplers can change pitch by simply speeding up or slowing down the replay rate of a recorded sound to change its pitch—however, if we took the lowest ‘C’ Steinway grand piano sample and transposed it up 4 octaves, the result would be much more akin to a cheap honky-tonk instrument, since the true acoustic effect would have been to transpose all of the fixed resonances of the Steinway. ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ made a living by such transposition.

We use formants everyday—they are the vowel sounds we produce when speaking. Our vocal cords are the excitation source, but they don’t change shape for each vowel—instead we change the shape of our oral cavity, which (along with our sinuses) create a specific complex of resonances resulting in an ‘A’, ‘O’, ‘U’ etc. Unlike instrumental fixed formants, when we produce diphthongs (vowels that morph from one into another (‘ai-yo’, ‘oo-ee’), we smoothly change the shape of our oral cavity and hence the resonating characteristics. Later on, when we study synthesis, we will discuss resonant filters that allow us to enhance or reduce certain specific frequency areas of a signal.

Tubes of various diameters and lengths also have easy-to-calculate resonating frequencies as demonstrated by blowing across the opening of a bottle. Whether the tube is open on both ends or closed on one end or cylindrical or conical in shape will also effect the resonant frequency. The vibrating air column set up in such 'resonators' also produce standing waves, discussed in the next chapter. See the Hyperphysics air colmn reference below for futher study. The entire woodwind and brass family of acoustic instruments produce sound in this method. Recently, physical modeling synthesis software has made use of the resonator principles to recreate similar phenomena with software without the physical restrictions of the real world--for example, a program might model a 200'-long flute.
if singer sing a song with highier frecquency then they will break the glass.

Answer 10

Hi,

Resonance is the process of an object picking up the vibrations of another object because it's on the same frequency. That's the romantic version. ;-)

Technically an object has an own frequency which is always present. When another object radiates the same frequency the first will pick it up to increase the level of its' own (the sinewave gets an higher amplitude).