Mercury Wave Made With 20 Vials Suspended From Springs

Photographer and former radio astronomer Marcel Clemens suspended 20 tiny vials containing slightly different masses of mercury from springs attached to a wooden frame, then set them all in motion at once. Their different oscillation frequencies created a beautiful wave that morphed into other colorful patterns, including a double helix. Clemens described the display as a visual representation of a pipe organ’s sounds.

The accuracy of the oscillation time period is better than about 0.5 milliseconds. The use of mercury allows the masses to be controlled very precisely and its high density means the bottles can be kept quite small. This is a kind of visual representation of the sounds of a pipe organ, the smallest pipe being on the right.

Clemens also configured the “Mercury Wave” so that each vial struck a piano key.

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Clemens also demonstrated how speeding up the oscillations by a factor of 400 would produce sound.

If we were to speed up the oscillations of the “Mercury Wave” by a factor of 400, the oscillations would produce sound. The periodic alignment of the vials would now happen 5 times per second (rather than once per minute) and as they would all push the air in the same direction this results in a louder sound.