The London Light institute brings together scientists and industries in London who work on emerging photonic technologies. The launch event will take place at King’s College London and coincides with the first International Day of Light. It is open to all. You can register for free!
We are getting ready with two exciting demos for Imperial Festival 2018 on 28-29 April. The festival invites the wide community to experience Imperial’s research in science, engineering, health and business up close.
From acoustic levitation to sound beam tweezers, ultrasonic shrimp to light emitting bubbles, some effects of sound can appear in ways that are often not well understood. In our research, we analyse the complex interaction of sound waves with solids, liquids and bubbles to characterize their rich and complex behaviour and probe their fundamental properties.
We are bringing to the Festival two experiments that will guide the audience to understand some unusual ways in which sound waves can interact with matter.
We have built a sonic levitator to provide a demonstration for the very tiny forces that acoustic waves can exert on sound-reflecting objects, ultimately buiding up to levitate solid bodies in air!
Bring your own tiny object. We will try to levitate it!
In the second experiment, we invite you to experience a beautiful way to visualize sound, by observing a soap film trapped in a bottle’s neck. Music emitted from a speaker forces the bottle to resonate for a particular set of musical frequencies. A fascinating consequence is that the colour bands that appear on a soap film… cannot help it! They start to move and dance in synch with the music in a very graceful way. The sound/light interaction experiment is triggered by complex hydrodynamic effects taking place within the bottle including acoustic vibrations, capillary waves and 2D turbulence patterns.
What will your favourite song look like on a soap film?
The images in this article are from previous events we attended – We Are Robots and Hackoustic.
Garbin Research Group 