Science is Awesome

We spent the afternoon working on a science fair project with some of our good friends. We built a Rubens' Tube, which is a simple device that demonstrates how sound waves affect pressure and equalization. We took a pipe and drilled a row of one hundred small holes for the gas to escape through and sealed the ends with balloons. We piped propane gas into the tube and lit the gas, and a beautiful row of tiny flames flickered in front of us.

Most people affix a speaker at one end, but we have a Rock-it speaker from Origaudio, which we found by watching Shark Tank. This awesome speaker attaches to any surface and resonates on whatever you attach it to. We found that speaker worked better than anything else we tried.

We played a variety of music and found that most classical music has better variance in pitch and volume, which provided the most variance in flame height. I imagine that being able to better level the sound would produce better sound quality, but it was still a very awesome. We also pinpointed that the F just above middle C produced the tallest flame at 4 inches high.

For the music nerds out there reading my blog, Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 Movt. 1, Saint-Säens' Symphony No. 3 "Movt. 3", Holst's The Planets Suite - Jupiter, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee produced the best results. Coldplay's Viva la Vida was also spectacular. We concluded the evening by roasting marshmallows on the tube.

Science is awesome.