Can operatic sopranos really break glasses with their high notes? What note does the trick? How come they don’t break windows and eyeglasses and whatnot at the same time? Can women do this better than men? Can I learn how? Or have I been the victim of an elaborate hoax? –Vox Clamantis, Chicago
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The technique is simple. First you find somebody with perfect pitch and leather lungs. Then get a crystal glass and tap it with a spoon to determine its natural frequency of vibration (this varies with the glass). Next have the singer let loose with precisely the same note. When he or she is dead-on pitchwise, the glass will commence to resonate, i.e., vibrate. Then turn up the V. Bingo, instant ground glass.
Breaking glasses, however, is strictly light entertainment. For real forced oscillation action you want a suspension bridge. In 1831 troops crossing a suspension bridge near Manchester, England, supposedly marched in time to the bridge’s sway. Boy, did they get a surprise. Ever since soldiers have been told to break step when crossing bridges. The same fate befell the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge in Washington State on November 7, 1940, only it wasn’t soldiers that caused it to collapse, it was the wind.
BIG MC AND FRIES, PLEASE
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
