Wave Machine ver. 3: FiberLab Symphony Orchestra

Ladies and gentlemen. Please allow me to present the FiberLab Symphony Orchestra, consisting of 1 perforated hardboard, 2 craft rings, 12 wooden trims, 288 wooden balls, 720 metal findings, and about 1500 feet of nylon string - all accompanied by the ravishingly beautiful String Quartet No. 2 by Alexander Borodin. 

Everything is connected, and just works because of a simple concept. Powered by hand with no help from motors and electricity, it almost dares to lean toward the hipster spectrum. But again, this piece of music was already cool in the 1880s. Anyway, here are some screen captures for you:

Wave Machine Ver. 2 - the Carousel / a Moveable Feast

And I keep plugging away at this Wave Machine thing. With its new look modelled after the Eiffel Tower Carousel, it now generates two kinds of waves when you move the top ring and flag pole individually. More interestingly, combining the two motions adds the two waves together and allows you to observe a physics phenomenon called wave interference. Observe what happens when two different waves propagate through each other.

The resulting wave becomes amplified or cancelled depending on how the original two interact with each other. The plan is to continually develop this "toy" and hopefully it will engage more girls in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields in the future. 

I've also been having a lot of fun learning Adobe After Effects from Youtube channels like ECAbrams and Mt. Mograph. Thank you, Evan and Matt, for making learning tutorials totally binge-watching worthy. 

My "LOW-TECH" Wave Machine Version 1.0

Circles and waves have become my muse. After months of daydreaming and experimenting with different material combinations, I finally made a prototype of a kinetic mobile that creates soothing, beautiful curves! The design utilizes simple geometric properties of circles to approximate sine waves. Watch it dance as I move the top disk around:

"LOW-TECH" Wave Machine

Action Shot

PS I made it cute over the weekend.