I mean, I understand that it’s difficult and has to be a very certain key at a specific volume, but I still don’t understand how that alone is capable of breaking a solid object. And why just glass? What about glass? Surely we can break other stuff too? I’m confused.
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Think of swinging on a swing set. You pump your legs back and forth which generates a little bit of forward and back movement, but not more than a few inches. However, pumping your legs in time with the back and forth motion of the swing allows you to add up that little bit of motion your legs create. Over time you can get the swing moving a massive amount. The same thing is happening with the glass. The glass wants to resonate at a certain frequency, just like the swing wants to swing back and forth at a certain tempo. Singing a note into the glass at just the right frequency is like pumping your legs with the right timing. The little “push” the sound waves give the glass line up just right with the way it wants to resonate, and the vibration of the glass increases until it breaks itself apart. To compare this back to the swing example, at a certain point you’ve added so much movement into the swing set that the chain starts to go slack at the top of each swing, and pushing it further throws it into chaos.
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