The sound makes the plate vibrate. At certain pitches the vibrations are forming standing waves, i.e. the plate exhibits nodes at which the rice is repelled or collected respectively. Typical physics class experiment, but still nice. The resonance pattern actually tells something about the shape of the plate. (Thats a mathematical problem). The rice should be uncooked.
posted by nad
on Thursday, June 8th, 2006 at 10:03 pm // math, physics.
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June 11th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
what happenes if the rice is cooked?
October 22nd, 2006 at 7:03 pm
it sticks
May 29th, 2007 at 9:59 am
[…] As the interested randform reader knows I like to report about popular experimentation trends in science (like e.g. this post about resonance rice or this post about cornstarch music (which is linking also to the famous diet coke experiments, whose popularity seems to be unstoppable)), here is a new trend, namely: ripping phone books in half. […]