The other night I wanted to do a quick Cymatics experiment at my house, as I didn’t have time to go to my studio that day. I came up with a cool cymatics effect using only a wine glass, some water, some food coloring, and some salt.
I ended up creating a blue vortex inside the wine glass – very beautiful, and very simple to do.
Here’s how to do it yourself:
1. Get a wine glass, some food color (darker colors like red or blue work best) some salt.
2. Fill the wine glass with water about 2/3 full.
3. Sprinkle some salt into the bottom of the wineglass (about 1/4 tsp).
4. Drop about 5 drops of food coloring right into the center of the water. (Don’t disturb the glass or stir).
5. Holding the stem of the wineglass, with it sitting firmly on the table, wet your finger and run it continuously around the rim of the wineglass (you’ve probably done this before or seen it done) until the glass is ’singing.’ Keep doing this – going around in a circle in the SAME direction.
6. Watch the ‘vortex’ form inside the glass! You will also see, if you observe closely, some cymatics patterns radiating inward from the sides of the glass, on the surface of the water.
Note: I am not sure exactly why the salt makes this work better, from my observation it draws and weights the color toward the bottom of the glass, anchoring it in the center there, so that it makes a better vortex in the middle than if you didn’t have salt in the glass.
Pretty cool…
Do you have a home-brewed cymatic experiment you would like to share with me? Leave a comment here, and you can also join my School of Cymatics, create your own Cymatics page, and post your cymatics videos here: www.cymatics.ning.com