Citizen Science #19 by Jamie Zvirzdin

Energy Demystified: Understanding Sound Energy

The intense hum of a singing bowl reverberated through the quiet yoga studio, filling the space with an almost otherworldly sound. For many, this practice brings peace and mindfulness. But for me and my mother-in-law, Catherine, the experience was quite different. As our yoga teacher circled the mallet around the edge of the bowl, we both felt a sharp discomfort, a painful resonance.

Wincing, I covered my ears, as I do when ambulances pass. I didn’t feel I could interrupt or leave, which might be considered rude, so I endured it as best I could with my ears covered. As class concluded, I asked the yoga teacher why the sound hurt my ears, and she said it was because my sexual chakra was off-balance.

This was laughably far from true, and it rather astonished me that she’d say this in front of the whole class, but the mystery remained: Why did Catherine and I feel physical pain at this sound when others liked it?

How Sound Energy Is Produced

So what’s going on with singing bowls? When the suede mallet is rubbed around the rim of the singing bowl, the friction of this action is not uniform, but “stick-slips”: Essentially, the mallet grabs the bowl’s metal surface, then slips, then grabs again, repeating this cycle rapidly. Every time the mallet sticks, it actually deforms the metal very slightly, on the microscopic scale. These small deformations store elastic potential energy (remember Citizen Science article No. 17?) in the metal.