Overview

Ernst Chladni, an amateur musician and inventor of musical instruments, studied the production of sound by vibrating solid objects, particularly solid plates. Using sand sprinkled on the plates, he was able to discover the nodal lines associated with the different modes of vibration. The intricate patterns of curved lines, called Chladni figures, generated much popular interest and stimulated mathematical research that would have important implications for the physical sciences and engineering.

Background

The ancient Greeks understood that sounds originated in the vibrations of solid bodies. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras (c. 580-500 B.C.) and his disciples knew that strings (under equal tension) with lengths in the ratio of small whole numbers produced combinations of sounds pleasing to the ear. Around the year 1700 the French mathematician Joseph Sauveur (1653-1716) demonstrated that in its simplest vibrations the...