I’ve heard this term a lot as a musician. I’m aware that by finding an objects resonant frequency and playing that frequency it will break or smash, for example when singers break wine glasses with their voice, or the whole Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation thing. What is an object’s natural resonant frequency, how is it determined, and what happens to an object when you play it that makes things smash or break? Thanks!!
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Simple experiment: take a glass and flick it with your fingernail, tap it with a utensil, several times. No matter how hard you hit it or what you hit it with, it always makes a sound with the same pitch (musical note). This is the resonance frequency of the glass. When you hit it, it causes the glass to vibrate and the vibration through it has this frequency. A tuning fork is just built to a specific frequency by the manufacturer, and to hold the vibration for a long time once you hit it.
Hitting your glass with sound should also make it vibrate. If you hit it with its own vibration frequency, you can get some amplification effects into the glass as the air and glass vibrate at the same frequency, building up the intensity in the glass until it shatters.
I’ve never done this myself, and I would not recommend attempting this at home. Broken glass is dangerous. Any more details on the technical aspects of how you pull this off, google/youtube for yourself.
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