Does a bowl sing?

Classical Mechanics Level 2

The above image depicts a Tibetan singing bowl with a mallet which has one of its ends covered with wool. Now take the mallet in your hand and hit the bowl at its upper side with the end having wool of the mallet. Eventually, you will hear a specific sound from the bowl. Now place the woolen end of mallet on the upper surface of bowl and move it around the circumference of the upper plane of the bowl. To see this all in action watch this video .

You will notice that as you move the mallet, the sound made becomes louder and louder. Explain this phenomenon.

As wool reflects sound nicely , it converges sound waves from all sides , making it louder. The bowl is an antique and has supernatural powers. There is no effect on sound and you are tricked by the video-maker who made sound by various tools. The sound waves formed on the surface of bowl , crash into each other and amplify it. Since the bowl is made of solid metal alloy , the sound travels faster. In truth , the sound becomes less loud because wool is a good absorber of sound.

Nihar Mahajan by Nihar Mahajan , 20, India

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2 solutions

Jake Lai
Jun 28, 2015

This phenomenon is known as wave interference, where two acoustic waves are superposed over one another to create a resultant wave of greater amplitude.

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Maximus Orilius
Jul 20, 2015

Because of the Interference property of the sound waves getting generated around the bowl due to the rubbing of the mallet, the amplitude of the resultant wave increases producing more sound with time.

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