Sound experiment makes water appear to dance backwards

A creator of science and illusion videos is manipulating water with his sorcery, making a stream from a hose zigzag as if temporarily suspended in mid-air.

Arrest this man. But first, we must understand his magic.

The video, which has been viewed nearly 600,000 times since the user, Brusspup, uploaded it on March 11, shows a speaker with a rubber hose attached to it.

When the water starts flowing and the speaker emits a tone at a particular frequency, the stream suddenly bends, falling in a zigzag pattern as it descends to the ground.

The instructions below the video for those who want to try the experiment say to tape a rubber hose to the speaker, which will cause both items to vibrate with the sound.

Then, using tone-generating software, you must set the speaker to emit a tone at exactly 24 hertz. The experiment, as performed here, is invisible to the naked eye. The description says that only a camera shooting at 24 frames per second can see the anti-gravity effect.

Using sound to move liquid isn't only cool, it's also useful, according to the water-levitating scientists at Argonne National Labratory.

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Using sound waves to levitate tiny droplets of pharmaceuticals, the lab says researchers can study complex solutions without having them touch anything, which is valuable for developing drugs with a very sensitive molecular structure.

For those outside of the pharmaceutical industry, the technology would be useful for creating tiny floating droplet sculptures and starting at them in awe for hours. Whoa.

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