Can somebody help me understand what “resonant frequency” is?
In: Physics
* Imagine a giant Jello mold.
* Slap that sucker as hard as you can and then watch it in slow-motion.
* You’ll see the force of the slap work its way from one of the mold to the other where the jello would bulge out at the end and then work its way back again.
* In fact you’ll see that slap going back and forth over and over again.
* Each time if passes through, however, it loses some energy.
* Eventually it will totally die out.
* Also important to note, the speed with which that slap makes its way through the Jello has nothing to do with how hard you slapped it, but rather the physical properties of the jello.
* Now imagine you could slap it really fast, faster than the slap moves through the jello.
* Again watch it in slow-motion and you’ll see that now there are many slaps working their way forward and then backward in the jello.
* What happens if you happen to slap it right at the same moment that a previous slap was about to make another loop?
* You’d get a super slap because you have the energy of the previous slap plus the new energy you added with your own slap.
* The Jello would bulge out extra far.
* Remember the speed at which the slaps move is based entirely on the jello.
* So as you can see if you slap the jello at just the right speed you can always get the slaps to line up and cause a super slap.
* This is resonance.
* It’s when the natural speed of vibration of an object lines up with the speed of some external source of vibration.
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