Meditation is hard, but watching this one-minute video of a steel ball making patterns on sand is easy (and nearly as relaxing). A modern take on the ancient art of the Zen garden, Bruce Shapiro ...

Vibrations Visualized With Sand And Sound Shake a metal plate covered in sand at certain frequencies and intricate patterns mysteriously appear. Jon Jacobsen, a mathematician at Harvey Mudd ...

The resulting patterns can be visualized ... discovered that the vibrations of a rigid plate could be visualized by covering it with a thin layer of sand and drawing a bow across its edge.

With the bow movement, the sand bounces and shifts, collecting along the nodal lines of the vibration. Chladni's discovery of these patterns earned him the nickname, "father of acoustics." ...